A Peaceful Mind is a Strong Mind
Or, how to achieve true Strength through mindfulness
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Hear ye! Hear ye!
I am officially starting a daily meditation practice.
Again.
As of tomorrow.
Probably.
Maybe today.
But I’m serious this time.
Like, so obsessed with your morning workout that you refuse to skip a day even when you’re traveling and thus live in some crazy dimension where a state-of-the-art gym in a hotel is even remotely relevant to your vacation plans serious.
Why? Because do you remember how in last week’s newsletter, we were exploring the Seven of Wands’ call to be more disciplined with our focus and attention, and not to squander our energy on low vibe stuff that takes us off our true path?
Well, I have been unbelievably bad at that lately. But that’s okay! This is precisely why I included the Path to Success Tarot Spread at the end of last week’s newsletter - to help guide us to this aligned path of clarity and strength. In fact, when I did that tarot spread myself, the Strength card came up in the position of an action I can take.
Upon first blush, it might seem like I asked my tarot cards how I can be stronger in fighting off negativity and my cards said, “I know! Have you tried being, like, stronger?”
But this Major Arcana card is about a very specific type of strength. And one way to cultivate it that I know I’ve been craving is through a mindfulness practice. Thus, my opening proclamation about restarting the mindfulness meditation practice I’ve been doing irregularly for almost fifteen years now. (Yikes! I had to count back in my head and was not expecting that number to be over ten. Note to self: Buy wrinkle cream.)
Something unique about understanding the Strength tarot card is that instead of focusing on what we do see in the card’s imagery, we should also consider what we don’t see.
And what we don’t see in this card is the prevailing version of lion myths and the heroes that dominate them. The expected lion mythology - at least in Western culture - comes to us from ancient Greece and the Bible.
Perhaps the most famous mythical hero of all time, one whose very name has become synonymous with strength, is none other than Luisa Madrigal.
Just kidding.
It’s Hercules.
(But please feel free to discuss Encanto in the comments. I’m here for it.)
The very first of Hercules’ Twelve Labors, or trials, was fighting a lion. More specifically, it was to bring the skin of a specific lion who had been terrorizing the hills of Nemea (and the peaceful animals who grazed there) to King Eurystheus. Hercules traps the offending lion in a cave, seizes the beast with his bare hands, and chokes it to death thanks to his unmatched strength and apparent imperviousness to the lion’s mad clawing that was undoubtedly taking place during the ordeal.
The other famous lion slayers are David (of Goliath fame) and Samson (of Pantene commercial fame), both from the Old Testament.
David was a bit different from Hercules because he was a mere scrawny shepherd. But with the help of the Lord’s spirit, like Hercules, David “grabbed [the lion] by its mane and struck it and killed it” all before it could devour the sheep that was already in its mouth, according to 1 Samuel 17.
And then we have Samson, whose divine strength was contained in his famously long hair (but also the Lord’s spirit). In Judges 14, Samson nonchalantly kills a lion who jumps out at him on a run of the mill stroll through a vineyard. No big deal:
Suddenly, a young lion came roaring toward Samson!
The Spirit of the Lord entered Samson with great power, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands. For him it was as easy as tearing apart a young goat.
(Spoiler alert: Samson ultimately loses his hair and thus his superhuman strength at the hand of - to absolutely nobody’s surprise - a conniving woman.)
These three myths share a few key factors that have helped solidify the most common archetype of strength in our collective unconscious.
First, the heroes are all men, which equates fearlessness and strength with male virility.
Second, the slain prey in all of them is a lion, a most carnivorous and unlikely victim. But the poor victim in these myths must be the king of the jungle for the hyperbole to be effective, and for man’s (and his God’s) place as supreme ruler to be secure.
And third, the lions are all killed in hand-to-paw combat. No weapons. Aside from the Spirit of the Lord swooping in to aid the latter two, it is brute strength that defeats the lion.
The image of Strength in the tarot, however, is pretty much the antithesis of the prevailing depiction of Strength in our collective unconscious. It almost seems like a joke! The figure who has appeared to have tamed the lion in this tarot card is about as feminine as it gets: a young maiden wearing a flowing gown and adorned in flowers. All of the delicate flowers! She even put a few flowers in the lion’s mane to match her own Coachella-style flower crown.
Now that is badass.
And in case you are not convinced that this lion is not looking up at the woman as his next delicious meal, any dog mom will tell you to look at his tail. Animals tuck their tail between their legs like that when they are nervous, scared, or in the presence of a larger or more dominant animal. My dog does it, for example, when he sees a Great Dane trotting along the river path on his morning walks. He then looks desperately over at me as if to say, “What the f*ck is that - a horse!?”
So how did this garlanded lady come to completely tame and dominate this fierce beast? Not by mustering up some agro display of power or brute force to rush, attack, or man-handle the lion into submission. (In fact, hot take alert: Some modern tarot decks do opt for a more Herculean depiction in the Strength card and I think that entirely misses the point of this tarot archetype even though it certainly makes for a powerful image.)
No, she cultivates her inner peace and stands in her quiet strength. And she does this with her mind. We know this because of the lemniscate - the symbol for infinite and divine mind - above her head. She and the Magician are the only tarot archetypes who have it. And if we think back to the Magician, whose entire deal is that the infinite power and creative potential of his thoughts can conjure and manifest anything he desires, the connection is clear.
True strength is in our power over our thoughts - which ones we choose to breathe energy into and expand upon, and which ones we choose to simply acknowledge and say, “Sorry, not today. Off you go!”
When we view the Strength card through the lens of the psyche, the lion represents our ego, and all the thoughts and desires and fears that come with it. According to Freud, whom Sallie Nichols quotes in Tarot and the Archetypal Journey, the lion “is a ‘fiery’ animal, an emblem of the devil, and stands for the danger of being swallowed” by our thoughts. Nichols goes on to explain that the woman in the Strength card “is in no sense carried away by her bestial friend.”
Mindfulness is the way we prevent being “swallowed” or “carried away” by our endless thoughts, especially the more emotionally charged ones, to which we can become quite easily attached. When we practice mindfulness, we learn that we are not our thoughts but rather the conscious observer of our thoughts. Our true self is not our thoughts - which are just clouds floating across the sky - but our seat of consciousness, to borrow a Buddhist term.
The mind of the woman in the Strength card, like the Magician, is eternally in flow and one with the Universal Mind. This woman emits her calm, confident grace to those around her, but she is also poised and ready to take action if she must. And only if and when she must.
Our culture and mythology seem to teach us to read strength into the biggest, loudest, flashiest person in the room. But the Strength card in tarot invites us to consider the more subtle yet equally potent strength that a peaceful mind can cultivate.
We can harness true inner power by taming our thoughts, because a peaceful mind is a strong mind.
The woman in the Strength card doesn’t need to fear the lion.
She is the lion.
If you want to learn more about mindfulness meditation and how it can strengthen our ability to stay in the present moment, I have something special for you this week. Instead of a tarot spread, I have a list of 8 mindfulness books (with descriptions) to help you on your journey. These are all books that I own, have read, and that shifted my perspective in life-altering ways.
Some are step-by-step guides. Others are more philosophical. All of them are wonderful.