The Strength Card

There are times when all one can ask for is strength. Please give me strength.

And very often the Strength card in the Tarot does just what it says on the tin. Talks about strength; physical, mental, emotional, moral, strategic, economic, and military. Strength of spirit. The courage to initiate, the fortitude to withstand.

Brave as a lion, strong as an elephant.

It’s generally good news, the best kind of reassurance we could hope for if you or a loved one is not well, and this card comes up on the future timeline. The reader is detecting recovery.

Image from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

But this card also correlates to the month of Leo, and this can be the answer to a question, ‘when?’

The younger daughter passed her driving theory test yesterday. I was optimistic that she would, because I had asked about the outcome and drawn just one card: The Strength card.

It was her third attempt at £31 a pop. Still, I didn’t have to pass this test when I passed my driving test. All I had had to do was answer 3 or 4 theory questions at the end of the practical exam.

On the two previous occasions I had asked about the likely outcome, and drawn multiple mixed cards. And she had not passed. Mixed cards amount to a weak or confused signal or a negative answer. In Tarot, I have found that the absence of a clear positive tends to mean a negative answer. Or it wants me to ask a different question, and it’s going to hold back for now, and tell me later.

Sometimes less is more, and it’s better to  pull just one card, or two, because your feelings can confuse the picture. The more cards, the more opportunity for confusion.

Were these previous negative forecasts a reason for her not to make those previous attempts at her driving theory test? Of course not.

I didn’t tell her what the cards said, or failed to say. That they had failed to show me The Magician, or Chariot card, or Judgement or The Sun or The World.

Any of these would have been good auguries for a pass.

I didn’t tell her I’d got ‘bad’ cards.

I might have put her off her stroke and brought about a self- fulfilling prophecy.

Beyond this, Life demands we have a go and take risks and be ready to challenge the odds, taking the jumps and the falls.

Prediction senses the odds, and much of the time the odds ought to be challenged. It is only, there are times when the stakes are high, it might be useful to get a sense of the odds.

My daughter asked me do an online sample theory driving test with her last night. To keep her company.

Oh lawd help me now, I thought. And thank goodness I passed it or I’d never have heard the end of it.

Il Matrimonio, her dad, meanwhile, refused to do the test, saying she was a cocky little git, he wasn’t not the one doing his driving test, and she’d better pass the practical exam first time.

I didn’t pass mine first time, way back before I met Il Matrimonio. It took me two goes, and I didn’t have the money for a long while in-between.

And he was the same. He passed on his second attempt, but he thinks to beat us all with the trump card of his having been an army helicopter pilot once upon a time. He flew helicopters for two years in the Army.

And that is indeed quite the trump card. I wouldn’t even want to get in one of those things.

Kudos to him, but still, he chickened out of this one.

Oh yes, he did.

Until next time 🙂