Hello and welcome to Tarot Bites. I'm Teresa Reed the Tarot Lady. I am the author of

the Tarot coloring book and I'm your host for this podcast series. This is episode 18 of Tarro Bites, the

podcast where I dish out short entertaining bite-sized lessons on how to retero.

For today's episode, our topic is strength.

So let's begin.

Now before we begin diving into the symbols of the strength card, let's discuss the controversy around

the switch between the strength card and the justice card.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, in early tarot decks, justice was originally

the card numbered 8 in the Major Arcana, and strength was numbered 11.

Now when A.E. Waite created the Rider Waite Smith deck, he switched them.

So suddenly strength became 8 and the justice card became 11.

Now according to some sources when he did that, he did it in order to make them fit better

with the astrological correspondences.

By the way, in a future episode, we're going to cover all of those astrological correspondences,

but for now know that strength is connected to Leo and justice is related to Libra.

And in the Zodiac, Leo comes before Libra. So actually to me this kind of makes sense.

Now according to Rachel Pollack in 78 degrees of wisdom, A.E. Wait gives no real reason for the change. Rachel goes on

to quote him as saying, for reasons which satisfy myself, this

card has been interchanged with that of justice, which is usually number eight.

As the variation carries nothing which will signify to the reader, there is no cause for explanation.

Hmm.

Well, that's very interesting.

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