Strength

Stage III - The Warrior

Two cards comprise this stage: Strength and The Emperor. The former asks us to have the inner strength to continue to war against what we uncovered in the Moon Pool and carry it to a higher level. The Emperor shows the Fool, male or female, firmly established on a mountain-top, which is above the hubbub of the ordinary world. This stage, therefore, represents the establishment of inner strength, which we must fight to obtain. Success at this stage is critical before we can go on to the next stages.

The Image of Strength

In order for our mind to be able to stand apart from our feelings, it must not get hooked into them; it must be an impartial observer. This idea was introduced in the Moon Pool card, and is developed and strengthened with this next card.

This card is usually titled Strength, although in the Marseilles deck it’s called Force. Usually, a woman is shown holding the jaws of a lion; she is either holding them open or trying to close them. We will see that she is actually doing both, which will convey the two different, but complementary, meanings of this card. But first we will have to discover who the woman is, or what qualities her figure represent, and likewise who or what the lion is. The lion is the focus of this card—and provides the link to Leo in the Zodiac—so we will start there.

The lion, first of all represents our animal instincts, passions and desires. The lion on the (early, at least) Waite-Smith card is colored red to indicate red-hot passions, although there are other reasons the lion is red as we shall see. One idea of this card is that we must get our emotions under control by some means as we encounter them in our daily lives, and especially if they have just been unearthed from our subconscious in the practices given for The Moon Pool. In this aspect, the woman, who must necessarily represent some part of ourselves, would be closing this lion’s mouth; quieting his roar represents calming the passions and curbing desires.  This much is clear and straightforward. It gets a bit more complicated when we try to discover who the woman is.