A woman steals away under cover of darkness, five swords clutched to her chest, two left standing in the enemy camp. A second woman, unarmed, calmly opens a lion’s mouth with her bare hands. These two images from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck pose a question that every tarot reader eventually faces: when does clever strategy become self-defeating deception, and when does gentle strength become naive passivity? The Seven of Swords and Strength are not opposites. They are the same conversation at different stages.
What the Cards Actually Show
The Seven of Swords depicts a figure in a red cap and striped stockings creeping away from a tented encampment. They carry five swords. Two remain stuck in the ground, unclaimed. The sky is yellow, the ground barren. The figure looks back over their shoulder, not at the viewer but at what they have left behind. The card has been called the Thief, the Strategist, the Escape Artist. It is the card of getting what you want through indirect means.
Strength shows a woman in a white robe and a garland of roses. She holds the jaws of a lion closed, gently. The lion’s tongue lolls out. Above her head, the infinity symbol floats. She does not fight the lion. She does not run from it. She waits it out, hand on its mouth, until the animal’s own aggression exhausts itself. The card has been called Fortitude, the Lion Tamer, the Inner Power. It is the card of mastering one’s own instincts before confronting anything external.
Where the Images Come From: A History of Two Cards
The Seven of Swords and Strength did not always look this way. Before the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909, tarot cards followed the Marseille tradition, where the pip cards (the numbered suits) showed only the number of suit symbols arranged in patterns. The Seven of Swords in the Marseille deck is seven swords arranged geometrically, no figure, no narrative. The Strength card in Marseille shows a woman breaking a pillar, not holding a lion’s mouth. The lion is there, but the action is different: she is splitting stone.
It was Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith who gave these cards their dramatic, story-driven imagery. Waite, a British occultist and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote the accompanying book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Smith, an artist and fellow Golden Dawn initiate, drew the cards. Together they transformed the tarot from a set of abstract symbols into a gallery of human situations.
Waite described the Seven of Swords as “design, attempt, wish, hope, confidence in success.” But he also noted its shadow: “a plan that may fail, quarrels.” The figure sneaking away was Smith’s invention, and it stuck because it captured something the Marseille version could not: the moral ambiguity of getting ahead by stealth.
Strength, in the Golden Dawn system, corresponds to the astrological sign Leo. Waite placed it as the eighth trump, not the eleventh. This was a deliberate reordering. In the Marseille deck, Justice is eighth and Strength is eleventh. Waite swapped them to align with the zodiac: Leo (Strength) before Libra (Justice). This reordering became standard in the English-speaking tarot world, though the Marseille order persists in continental Europe.
The Argument Between the Cards: Strategy Versus Self-Mastery
The Seven of Swords asks: what are you willing to do to get what you want? The figure has taken five swords. They left two behind. Why not take all seven? Because taking all seven would have been impossible without detection. The thief knows that perfect victory is the enemy of good enough. They took what they could carry and left the rest. This is the card of the partial win, the strategic retreat, the escape that preserves the possibility of fighting another day.
Strength asks a different question: what are you willing to become to face what frightens you? The woman does not take anything. She does not run. She stands in front of the lion and holds its mouth closed. The infinity symbol above her head suggests that this is not a one-time event. It is a state of being. She has not conquered the lion. She has befriended it, or at least reached a truce. The lion’s tongue lolls, relaxed. The animal is not defeated. It is simply not attacking.
When these two cards appear together in a reading, they create a tension. The Seven of Swords says: be clever, be quick, take what you can and leave. Strength says: be patient, be present, meet the problem with your full attention and nothing else. One is a tactic. The other is a practice.
How the Cards Read in Practice
In a spread, the Seven of Swords often appears when a querent is avoiding a direct confrontation. They are working around a problem rather than through it. This is not always bad. Sometimes the direct approach is dangerous or foolish. The Seven of Swords can indicate a necessary deception, a white lie that protects someone, a strategic withdrawal that saves resources. But it can also indicate self-sabotage: the person who lies so often they forget the truth, the schemer whose schemes trap them.
Strength appears when the querent is being asked to stop fighting and start holding. The lion is not an external enemy. It is the querent’s own fear, anger, or desire. Strength says: do not suppress these things. Do not act on them either. Hold them. Let them exhaust themselves against your calm. This is the card of the person who does not need to win because they are already whole.
When the Seven of Swords precedes Strength in a spread, it suggests that the querent has been using clever tactics to avoid facing something. The cards are telling them to stop running and turn around. When Strength precedes the Seven of Swords, it suggests that the querent has done the inner work and now has the clarity to act strategically without self-deception.
The Astrological and Elemental Connection
The Seven of Swords belongs to the suit of Swords, which corresponds to the element Air: intellect, communication, strategy. The number seven in the Golden Dawn system corresponds to the planet Mars in the sign of Aquarius. Mars brings conflict, drive, aggression. Aquarius brings detachment, innovation, the outsider perspective. Together they create a person who fights from a distance, who wins by outthinking rather than overpowering. This is the card of the guerrilla, the hacker, the whistleblower.
Strength corresponds to the zodiac sign Leo, ruled by the Sun. Leo is fixed fire: steady, warm, creative, proud. The Sun rules the heart, the core self. Strength is not about fighting fire with fire. It is about being the fire, so steady that no external flame can outburn you. The lion is Leo’s own symbol. The woman holding its mouth is the Leo native learning to channel their own power without destroying what they love.
The contrast is elemental: Air versus Fire. The Seven of Swords thinks its way out. Strength burns its way through. One is cold, the other is warm. One is quick, the other is patient. Neither is wrong. But they cannot be used interchangeably.
Common Misconceptions
The most common mistake readers make with the Seven of Swords is assuming it always means dishonesty. It does not. The card can indicate a necessary privacy, a boundary, a refusal to engage on someone else’s terms. A person who walks away from a toxic argument is not being deceptive. They are being strategic. The Seven of Swords is the card of the escape artist, and sometimes escape is the only sane option.
The second mistake is reading Strength as a card of physical power. It is not. The woman in the card is not stronger than the lion. She is more present. She has not overpowered the animal. She has out-waited it. Strength is the card of endurance, not force. It is the person who stays in the room when everyone else has fled.
The third mistake is treating these cards as opposites. They are not. They are two points on the same spectrum. The Seven of Swords is the immature version of Strength. The schemer who learns patience becomes the lion-tamer. The lion-tamer who forgets strategy becomes a victim. A complete reader holds both cards in mind at once.
Notable Figures and Texts
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s Book T (also called The Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of the Higher Occultism, circulated in manuscript form from 1888) assigned the Seven of Swords to the Hebrew letter Zayin and the path between Binah and Tiphareth on the Tree of Life. This path is called the “Armor of the Self.” It represents the intellect’s ability to protect the heart. The Seven of Swords is the intellect working alone, without the heart’s guidance. That is why it can become cunning or self-serving.
Strength, in the same system, corresponds to the Hebrew letter Teth, the serpent, and the path between Chesed and Geburah. This is the path of the inner animal tamed. Teth is the ninth letter, the number of completion. The serpent eating its own tail, the ouroboros, appears in the infinity symbol above the woman’s head. Strength is the card of the completed self, the person who has integrated their shadow and no longer needs to fight it.
Aleister Crowley, in The Book of Thoth (1944), renamed Strength to Lust. He changed the image to a woman riding a beast, holding a cup of fire. Crowley’s version is more overtly sexual, more confrontational. He argued that the original Strength card was too passive, too Victorian. His Lust card is about the ecstatic surrender to one’s own nature. This is a minority position in tarot, but it is worth knowing because it shows how differently the same concept can be rendered.
FAQ
Can the Seven of Swords ever be a positive card? Yes. It can indicate strategic thinking, necessary privacy, or a tactical retreat from a situation that cannot be won head-on.
Is Strength always about inner power, or can it mean physical strength? It is almost always about inner power. Physical strength is a rare and specific reading, usually only when the card appears with the Emperor or the Chariot.
Which card is stronger in a conflict reading? It depends on the situation. The Seven of Swords wins the battle. Strength wins the war. One is immediate, the other is lasting.
Do these cards cancel each other out in a spread? No. They create a dialogue. The Seven of Swords asks if you are being honest with yourself. Strength asks if you are ready to face what you have been avoiding.
The Thread That Connects Them
The Seven of Swords and Strength are not rivals. They are the same person at different moments. The thief who steals away under cover of darkness is the same person who will one day stand calmly in front of the lion. The lion-tamer was once the schemer, and the schemer is learning to become the lion-tamer. The question is not which card is better. The question is which one you need right now.
If you are reading a spread that contains both, look at the positions. Which card is in the past? Which is in the future? The answer will tell you whether you are being asked to stop running or to start running smarter. Both are valid. Both require courage. One is the courage to leave. The other is the courage to stay.
For more on how the minor arcana interacts with the major trumps, see our guide to the minor arcana. To understand the astrological correspondences behind these cards, visit the glossary of tarot symbols. And for a deeper look at the Strength card’s role in the Fool’s journey, read the major arcana path.