Strength as Advice: Be Gentle and Patient

Written by Chaya the Medium.

Strength as advice asks for soft hands on the lion. Here is how to use it, and what the reversal says about self-doubt.

If you want the short answer, Strength as advice says: be gentle and patient, including with yourself. The difficulty in front of you will yield to calm and steady kindness far better than to force.

What Strength advises upright

Tina Gong's Strength guide at Labyrinthos associates the upright card with courage, compassion, inner strength and patience. In an advice position I read those meanings as an instruction: the attitude or action the card is asking of you, rather than a description of what will happen. The Major Arcana overview at Biddy Tarot is a useful second reference.

Upright, Strength advises quiet courage: stay steady in a hard conversation, be kind to the difficult person, manage your own temper and fear rather than acting from them.

What Strength is not asking you to do

Strength is not asking you to tolerate harm. Patience with a difficult phase is not the same as accepting mistreatment.

Strength reversed as advice

Reversed, Strength as advice says steady yourself first. Self-doubt or strain is shaping your choices; rest, ground yourself, then return to the problem. A reversed card in an advice position is usually pointing at the habit that is getting in your way, not at a punishment.

Strength as advice in love

In love, Strength advises patience and gentleness in conflict, and courage to stay soft.

Strength as advice for work and money

For work and money, it advises steady, calm persistence and grace with difficult colleagues. Advice from a card is reflection. For decisions with legal, medical or financial weight, take it to someone qualified as well.

One step to take this week

Think of the situation where you have been tempted to force things. Approach it once this week with patience instead, and notice what changes.

For comparison, the Chariot as advice and Temperance as advice ask different things of you. The Strength card meaning page covers the card in full, and Strength as a yes or no, Strength as feelings and Strength as timing cover the other questions people most often ask of it. You can draw a card for yourself with the free daily tarot tool. For a personal interpretation, my guide to an online psychic reading explains how readings work, and the three-card tarot listing and customer reviews are worth reading before deciding whether to order.