Strength in 7 decks
The same card as 7 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A woman in a white gown garlanded with flowers calmly closes the jaws of a lion with her bare hands, a lemniscate floating above her head. The lion's tail is tucked and it looks up at her. The field is green and a blue mountain rises behind. There is no struggle in the picture.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A woman in a wide red-brimmed hat, yellow sleeves and a long red cloak bends to hold open the jaws of a shaggy grey lion with both hands. The lion rises beside her skirts, its long mane trailing down. The card is numbered XI, as in older decks, and titled LA FORCE.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A woman in a white gown garlanded with flowers calmly closes the jaws of a lion with her bare hands, a lemniscate floating above her head. The lion's tail is tucked and it looks up at her. The field is green and a blue mountain rises behind. There is no struggle in the picture.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A woman in a wide red-brimmed hat, yellow sleeves and a long red cloak bends to hold open the jaws of a shaggy grey lion with both hands. The lion rises beside her skirts, its long mane trailing down. The card is numbered XI, as in older decks, and titled LA FORCE.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
Numbered IX, though the site uses it as Strength, a figure in a broad red and green hat and a striped red, dark and yellow gown bends over a lion at the lower left. Both hands hold the lion's open jaws.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A young man in a blue tunic with red sleeves and red hose swings a green knotted club above his head. A red ribbon streams out behind him. Beneath his legs a brown lion crouches with its head turned down. Dark rounded hills rise behind, and the gold ground above is bright and finely tooled.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
A long-haired man in a purple tunic and red hose holds a naked infant upside down by the legs over a small fire. In his other hand is a staff with balls on cords, and a green shield and blue helmet lie at his feet. The name NERONE is beside his head and VIII at the left.
Sola Busca trumps are named figures matched to the standard trumps by number only.
Oswald Wirth
Oswald Wirth, 1889
A fair-haired woman in a red cloak and blue gown calmly holds open the jaws of a lion with a flaming red mane and yellow body. Her wide hat, with a small crown on top, curves into a figure-of-eight shape. Here the card is numbered 11, as in the Marseille order, with the title LA FORCE and the Hebrew letter kaph.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A woman in a red kimono with long black hair, eyes closed, gently cups the chin of a huge golden lion seated on a stone plinth. A thin cord hangs loosely from her other hand, and a glowing red fox emblem is set into the plinth. Bamboo and pine branches frame the scene, with the night city lights and a red torii beyond the railing.