Tarot and the Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols

Author:Sallie Nichols
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781633411180
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

Fig. 47 La Force (Marseilles Deck)

14. Strength: Whose?

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of

the strong came forth sweetness.

Judges 14:14

We have followed the hero's fortunes as he established his ego identity as the Lover, set forth in the Chariot to seek his place in the world of men, faced the moral problems posed by Justice, and turned to the Hermit in search of spiritual insight. The Wheel of Fortune marked the end of this cycle and ushered in a new phase of awareness. With its turning, the hero, too, experienced a revolution. From this point on, his interest will veer increasingly from the outer world to the inner one. Energies formerly caught up in external adaptation will begin to concern themselves more with inner growth. Powers previously involved chiefly with competition and survival now begin to move toward unification and further development. Problems belonging to the masculine, logos side of life will give way to the basic questions of instinctual nature, which belong to the realm of Eros, the feminine principle.

This change is dramatized in card eleven, Strength (Fig. 47). Here, for the first time, a mortal woman appears as the central actor in the drama. She is not a goddess, pictured immobile on a throne; she is a human being, dressed in the fashion of the period. Yet she is obviously no ordinary woman, for she is taming a lion. The shape of her hat suggests the lemniscate hat worn by the Magician. Like the Magician, she must possess magic powers, and like him, she represents an inner figure active in the hero's unconscious – one more readily accessible to consciousness than a god or goddess.

We might view this woman as the anima, an archetypal personage symbolizing the hero's unconscious, feminine side. In card number one, the Magician initiated our Tarot series. Here now in card ten plus one, we are ready for a new beginning and a new magic – one in which this lady magician will play the initiatory role. It is she who will act as mediator between the hero's ego and the more primitive powers of his psyche.

As a mediating cultural influence, Strength seems ideally cast. Her clothes and her bearing suggest refinement and breeding. Although she wears a hat similar to the Magician's, she holds no wand. Her power lies in the hands which fearlessly grasp the lion's jaws, indicating that her magic is more human, personal, and direct than that of her masculine counterpart. Her strength is not invested in a baton to be taken up and cast aside at will – or perhaps lost altogether. Her mysterious power resides in her very being as a permanent, intimate part of herself.

Her number eleven, written here in the Roman fashion as X plus I, recalls the Greek monogram for Christ spelled out by the Wheel's spokes in card ten. Here the X precedes the I. Evidently, the new magic pictured in card eleven has the force of the first ten cards behind it.

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