Strength

I want to share with you, Kind Reader, my journey in completing this painting of the Strength tarot card. If you dont already know I have an old RWS deck that I use only for pulling the next card that I need to paint for the artists journey tarot.. I then meditate with the image in mind. After studying the cards history and listening to or reading old and modern interpretations, I happily fall down many a rabbit hole looking for the origins of the symbols. I won’t go into every symbol here, so you don’t get bored with the telling, but I’ll try to explain which I choose if possible. Yes, I wanted to keep the image a woman and a lion, the inspiration of Pamela Coleman Smith who changed it from Fortitude, switching its place in line to card number 8 (appropriately representing Leo). But besides the infinity symbol, which I am still working out, there wasn't enough for me to feel like my mental image was real enough. I fear limiting interpretations by changing anything in a tarot card and I fear limiting interpretations by not trusting to my intuition and the images it hands me. I painted a lovely lion and modern maiden... and even added my own take with the anatomical heart, suggesting literal heart strings and leaning obviously to the lion hearted interpretation of the card. But the image felt incomplete. I listened to various podcasts on the Strength card which declared the subduing of the masculine energy of the lion/self/emotions, or the embracing of same, both interesting takes. I still couldn't move forward so I pulled a tarot card- Empress reversed -damn-and she said I have monkey brain- go meditate. Not a surprise. So I spent a day gardening- long overdo. My mind quieted and resting in the sun I thought if only I had an old red climbing rose to wind about my lion and maiden so you could see their adversity- the struggles and the beauty of life. But wait- I did- forgotten over boughts with Covid and 2020-the garden has an old red climber! And before all my other roses, still slowly waking up from winter, this one had awoken! It had a single bright red open bloom the color of the veins of the heart. I painted these into the piece plain air. As I worked I thought of two very young women in my life that are like daughters to me. One had been ghosted by her boyfriend of a year- her first love- vanishing from her life with no explanation. The other even more recently had been violated and abused and I found myself caring for her in my home. Both cut themselves. Do we need to feel the thorns to spark our strength? Are the cuts on her arm self inflicted or scratches from the rose, newly added? Or are the thorns the adversity that shows you your strength? Does it grow up around you slowly or come at you suddenly? And because I grieved so so much for these two women- still barely women - I painted her the antique clippers, a tool to cut away that adversity and feel and free the strength of the her spirit and her lion heart.