Strength shows a woman gently closing the mouth of a lion, a lemniscate (the sideways figure-eight, the symbol of the infinite) above her head. The lion is not subdued by violence. The lion is met.
Classical readings call this courage, but the deeper word is composure. Strength is the capacity to remain present with what is overwhelming — fear, anger, desire, grief — without being run by it and without numbing it. The lion is the instinctual self, and the woman is not above it; she is in conversation with it.
Reversed, the same composure breaks down. Self-doubt, repressed instinct, the lion either caged too tightly or running the show entirely. The shadow of Strength is the person who has confused suppression with mastery — who has stopped feeling the lion in order to seem strong, and who is paying interest on that loan in some other way.
When Strength appears, the reading is often pointing at how you are meeting the wild parts of yourself. Force will not work here. Avoidance will not work either. The card asks for steadiness, the long kind.
One card, one strand in a longer thread.