Strength

First written June 2018, revised November 2022 (mainly the parts on Case and Jung).

The card corresponding to the modern "Strength," French "La Force," and Italian "La Forza" was in the early Italian lists mostly called "Fortezza," although "Forza," "Forte", and the Latin "Fortitudo" are also known. All these words apply equally to moral strength, i.e. courage, and physical strength. However because the only other virtue cards are of justice and temperance, both of which are in the category of "cardinal virtues," and together they make up the three moral virtues of the four cardinal virtues (prudence being an intellectual virtue), we are led to the conclusion that the card refers to the cardinal virtue which in English is called Fortitude, which unlike its Latin and Italian equivalents "Fortitudo" usually means only the moral and not the physical virtue. But how was this card conceived in the 15th century?

1. The Concept of Fortitude

At the time of the early cards the most accepted analysis of the cardinal virtues was that of St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae. It in turn was a synthesis of Aristotle, whose work had recently been translated into Latin, and Christian tradition. The characterization of Fortitude as a "cardinal" virtue came from the latter. As I have related in my post on Justice, Christianity got its four "cardinal virtues" from Cicero (De Inventione II, 153, online in translation), who in turn got them from Plato (Republic 427e)-, but substituting the \prudence for Plato's wisdom:. In the 15th century the Christian version was most familiarly known through St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom (Summa Theologiae II-II [Second Part of the Second Part], q. (question) 47, a (article) 2, translated 1920 by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, online at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3047.htm):

it is clear that prudence is wisdom about human affairs: but not wisdom absolutely, because it is not about the absolutely highest cause, for it is about human good, and this is not the best thing of all.)

The best thing, of course, was God, the object of contemplative wisdom.

For all of these thinkers, the virtue Cicero called Fortitudo was a quality of the mentis - mind - or animo - soul or spirit - rather than the body.

For Plato this virtue in the state was that of the warrior class, which took its orders from the Guardians, corresponding to Wisdom. In the individual the virtue was associated with the part of the soul called θυμοειδές, thumoeides, “high spirited,” from the root thumos, associated with breath and blood. Plato said (Republic, 442b-c, translation of http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D442b and following, Greek of http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0167%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D442b and following):

Brave (ανδρειον, andreion],  too, then, I believe, we call each individual by virtue of that part in him when, namely, their high-spirit (θυμοειδές, thumoeides) preserves in the midst of pains and pleasures the rule handed down by the reason as to what is or is not to be feared or not.  

The Greek andreion is from andreia, literally “manliness,” a word that applied to women and things as well as to men. In English (and similarly in other modern languages) the word is translated as "bravery" or “courage.”

This definition is somewhat vague, but.it apparently means that courage has to do with what it is rational to fear, such as those who would attack the state or the individual. In that case it would seem rational to defend oneself. But what of death, which might result from such defense? Is it rational to fear it as well, and if so which is more important? It is up to the wisdom contained in the rational part of the soul, or of the state, to make that decision.

For Aristotle the virtue was also andreia. He defined it, as he did other virtues, as a mean between extremes (Nicomachean Ethics Book 2, chapter 7, W. D. Ross, trans. with facing Greek at https://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/aristotle/nicom2b.htm):

With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward.

The word translated as "confidence" here, thrasos, can also be translated as "boldness." It is up to the rational faculty to decide whether death or retreat is preferable. This is made clear in Book 2, chapter 6:

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

By "practical wisdom" Aristotle meant what Cicero would later call prudentia.

Now we can turn again to Aquinas (II-II, q. 123). He wrote a lot about Fortitude; but he is the most important, because his teachings had the highest prestige in the 15th century. I will try to pick out the most important excerpts, highlighting the most important points and giving a summary of them at the end.

After reminding us that Fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues (q. 123 Preamble), he argues that courage is a virtue in article 1, for which I again quote the Latin (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth3123.html, followed by the 1920 revised translation at (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3123.htm. I thank Andrea Vitali for drawing attention to this section in his essay "La Forza," http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=123; since it is rather long, I put in bold the most important part for present purposes:

 ...ad virtutem humanam pertinet ut faciat hominem et opus eius secundum rationem esse. Quod quidem tripliciter contingit. Uno modo, secundum quod ipsa ratio rectificatur, quod fit per virtutes intellectuales. Alio modo, secundum quod ipsa rectitudo rationis in rebus humanis instituitur, quod pertinet ad iustitiam. Tertio, secundum quod tolluntur impedimenta huius rectitudinis in rebus humanis ponendae. Dupliciter autem impeditur voluntas humana ne rectitudinem rationis sequatur. Uno modo, per hoc quod attrahitur ab aliquo delectabili ad aliud quam rectitudo rationis requirat, et hoc impedimentum tollit virtus temperantiae. Alio modo, per hoc quod voluntatem repellit ab eo quod est secundum rationem, propter aliquid difficile quod incumbit. Et ad hoc impedimentum tollendum requiritur fortitudo mentis, qua scilicet huiusmodi difficultatibus resistat, sicut et homo per fortitudinem corporalem impedimenta corporalia superat et repellit. Unde manifestum est quod fortitudo est virtus, inquantum facit hominem secundum rationem esse.

it belongs to human virtue to make man good, to make his work accord with reason. This happens in three ways: first, by rectifying reason itself, and this is done by the intellectual virtues; secondly, by establishing the rectitude of reason in human affairs, and this belongs to justice; thirdly, by removing the obstacles to the establishment of this rectitude in human affairs. Now the human will is hindered in two ways from following the rectitude of reason. First, through being drawn by some object of pleasure to something other than what the rectitude of reason requires; and this obstacle is removed by the virtue of temperance. Secondly, through the will being disinclined to follow that which is in accordance with reason, on account of some difficulty that presents itself. In order to remove this obstacle fortitude of the mind is requisite, whereby to resist the aforesaid difficulty, even as a man, by fortitude of body, overcomes and removes bodily obstacles. Hence it is evident that fortitude is a virtue, in so far as it conforms man to reason.

We see here an enumeration of the three moral virtues represented in the tarot, all of which require the "intellectual virtues" for their right application. We also see the distinction between "fortitude of body" verses "fortitude of the mind," the latter of which is the cardinal virtue, even if there is an analogy between them.

Aquinas also distinguished another type of of fortitude. Besides physical strength and the cardinal virtue, there is a generic kind of fortitudo that applied to following any of the virtues. He writes (Ibid, II-II, q. 123, a. 2)

...nomen fortitudinis dupliciter accipi potest. Uno modo secundum quod absolute importat quamdam animi firmitatem. Et secundum hoc est generali virtus, vel potius conditio cujus libet virtutis; quia sicut Philosophus dicit, ad virtutem requiritur firmiter et immobiliter operari. Alio modo potest accipi fortitudo; secundum quod importat firmitatem animi in sussinendis, et repellendis his, in quibus maxime difficile est firmitatem habere, scilicet in aliquibus periculis gravibus. Unde Tullius dicit, quod fortitude est considerata periculorum susceptio et laborum perpessio. Et sic fortitudo ponitur specialis virtus, utpote materiam determinatam habens.

the term 'fortitude' can be taken in two ways: the first as simply denoting a certain firmness of mind, and in this sense it is a general virtue, or rather a condition of every virtue: since as the Philosopher [Aristotle] notes, it is requisite for every virtue to act firmly and immovably. Second, fortitude can be taken in the sense of firmness of mind in bearing and dealing with those things in which it is most difficult to remain firm, as happens in certain grave dangers, for which Cicero [De inventori 2, 54] states that "fortitude consists in a deliberate facing of dangers and bearing of toils." So Fortitude in this sense is a special virtue, having its own determinate matter.

To be virtuous is to be of strong and immovable character in a variety of ways: temperance requires fortitude in resisting temptations of the flesh, food, and drink; justice requires fortitude in being fair in one's dealings with others; and so on. As a cardinal virtue, on the contrary it has to do with situations where it is difficult to remain firm, such as "certain grave dangers". We might also think of the courage not to divulge secrets under extreme conditions, i.e. situations of unusual "bearing of toils," even when one is not actually in grave danger.

Fortitude not only requires "remaining firm" but also on some occasions even to attack the source of danger (article 3):

ad virtutem fortitudinis pertinet removere impedimentum quo retrahitur voluntas a sequela rationis. Quod autem aliquis retrahatur ab aliquo difficili, pertinet ad rationem timoris, qui importat recessum quendam a malo difficultatem habente, ut supra habitum est, cum de passionibus ageretur. Et ideo fortitudo principaliter est circa timores rerum difficilium, quae retrahere possunt voluntatem a sequela rationis. Oportet autem huiusmodi rerum difficilium impulsum non solum firmiter tolerare cohibendo timorem, sed etiam moderate aggredi, quando scilicet oportet ea exterminare, ad securitatem in posterum habendam. Quod videtur pertinere ad rationem audaciae. Et ideo fortitudo est circa timores et audacias, quasi cohibitiva timorum, et moderativa audaciarum.”

It belongs to the virtue of fortitude to remove any obstacle that withdraws the will from following the reason. Now to be withdrawn from something difficult belongs to the notion of fear, which denotes withdrawal from an evil that entails difficulty, as stated above (I-II:42:3; I-II:42:5) in the treatise on passions. Hence fortitude is chiefly about fear of difficult things, which can withdraw the will from following the reason. And it behooves one not only firmly to bear the assault of these difficulties by restraining fear, but also moderately to withstand [aggredi, elsewhere in this Question translated "attack"] them, when, to wit, it is necessary to dispel them altogether in order to free oneself therefrom for the future, which seems to come under the notion of daring. Therefore fortitude is about fear and daring, as curbing fear and moderating daring.

There seems to me an error in translation regarding the word aggredi. What he means is "attack" and not "withstand". At the end of this passage Aquinas says that fortitude is not only about curbing fear, but "moderating daring"; while it sometimes is required to attack the source of difficulties, such attack should be done "moderately." This is in keeping with Aristotle, for whom the danger opposite from cowardice is recklessness. He will further explain what he means in article 6.

There is then the extreme case, where the danger is that of personal death (article 4):

... ad virtutem fortitudinis pertinet ut voluntatem hominis tueatur ne retrahatur a bono rationis propter timorem mali corporalis. Oportet autem bonum rationis firmiter tenere contra quodcumque malum, quia nullum bonum corporale aequivalet bono rationis. Et ideo oportet quod fortitudo animi dicatur quae firmiter retinet voluntatem hominis in bono rationis contra maxima mala, quia qui stat firmus contra maiora, consequens est quod stet firmus contra minora, sed non convertitur; et hoc etiam ad rationem virtutis pertinet, ut respiciat ultimum. Maxime autem terribile inter omnia corporalia mala est mors, quae tollit omnia corporalia bona, unde Augustinus dicit, in libro de moribus Eccle., quod vinculum corporis, ne concutiatur atque vexetur, laboris et doloris; ne auferatur autem atque perimatur, mortis terrore animam quatit. Et ideo virtus fortitudinis est circa timores periculorum mortis.

Now it behooves one to hold firmly the good of reason against every evil whatsoever, since no bodily good is equivalent to the good of the reason. Hence fortitude of soul [animi, also meaning "of spirit"] must be that which binds the will firmly to the good of reason in face of the greatest evils: because he that stands firm against great things, will in consequence stand firm against less things, but not conversely. Moreover it belongs to the notion of virtue that it should regard something extreme: and the most fearful of all bodily evils is death, since it does away all bodily goods. Wherefore Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl.[ xxii]) that "the soul is shaken by its fellow body, with fear of toil and pain, lest the body be stricken and harassed with fear of death lest it be done away and destroyed." Therefore the virtue of fortitude is about the fear of dangers of death. 

The quotation from Augustine is better translated as "Lest this bond with the body should be shaken and disturbed, the soul is shaken with the fear of toil and pain; lest it should be lost and destroyed, the soul is shaken with the fear of death" (http://gnosis.org/library/democ.htm).

In article 5 Aquinas says that it is not only in battle as a soldier that one must overcome the fear of death but also in private affairs, if reason dictates exposure to the danger of death. His examples are helping a sick friend even at the risk of exposure to a deadly disease and undertaking a dangerous journey for some "godly purpose."

In article 6 he raises the important consideration that even though the exercise of fortitude sometimes requires attack, it is principally concerned with endurance rather than aggression:.

...sicut supra dictum est, et philosophus dicit, in III Ethic., fortitudo magis est circa timores reprimendos quam circa audacias moderandas. Difficilius enim est timorem reprimere quam audaciam moderari, eo quod ipsum periculum, quod est obiectum audaciae et timoris, de se confert aliquid ad repressionem audaciae, sed operatur ad augmentum timoris. Aggredi autem pertinet ad fortitudinem secundum quod moderatur audaciam, sed sustinere sequitur repressionem timoris. Et ideo principalior actus est fortitudinis sustinere, idest immobiliter sistere in periculis, quam aggredi.

As stated above [Article 3], and according to the Philosopher [Aristotle, Ethic. iii, 9], "fortitude is more concerned to allay fear, than to moderate daring." For it is more difficult to allay fear than to moderate daring, since the danger which is the object of daring and fear, tends by its very nature to check daring, but to increase fear. Now to attack belongs to fortitude in so far as the latter moderates daring, whereas to endure follows the repression of fear. Therefore the principal act of fortitude is endurance, that is to stand immovable in the midst of dangers rather than to attack them.

Hence the fortitude of martyrs of the faith, among whom some could have attacked their aggressors but saw that reason dictated endurance rather than attack. Likewise, it seems to me, when one has been attacked by another, reason may dictate enduring the attack rather than attacking. Here there is the example of Jesus, who did not resist his crucifixion.

To sum up Aquinas:

1. Fortitude of the mind, one of the three cardinal virtues that are also moral virtues, is needed to remove the disclination of the will to follow that which is in accordance with reason, on account of some difficulty, even as one by fortitude of body overcomes and removes bodily obstacles.
2.  Although in one sense fortitude is a general virtue needed in the performance of any virtue, the cardinal virtue is a special virtue having to do with the deliberate facing of dangers and bearing of toils.
3.  Fortitude is about fear and daring, as curbing fear and moderating daring, i.e. the impulse to attack the object of one's fear.
4.  Fortitude is especially about curbing the fear of death, when reason so dictates.
5.  The principal act of fortitude, that requiring the most fortitude, is that of endurance, that is, standing immovable in the midst of dangers rather than attacking them, when reason so dictates.


2. Medieval and Renaissance Images of Fortitude

In the early tarot, depictions of Fortitude divide into two main groups. In one, a maiden or a man has her hands on the muzzle of a lion, whose mouth is open. If the person is a man, he is shown as actively attacking a lion, sometimes with a club. In the second, a woman stands or sits with her hands on a column of the type used to hold up buildings. Sometimes the column is broken, sometimes not; and sometimes she is holding it in a way that suggests great physical strength. These variations all need to be looked at in more detail.

The earliest known depiction, also the one that enjoyed the greatest success, is that of the lady with her hands on the lion, as we see in the Visconti tarot of 1440s Milan, continuing in the famous Tarot of Marseille of 17th and 18th century France. Court De Gébelin in 1781 described it as "a woman opening the mouth of the lion" (Monde Primitif, vol. 8, Paris 1781), but really we don't know if the hands are there to open it, to block it from doing harm, or for some other reason.

In a young maiden, we also have to ask, is this not recklessness, done in disregard for reason, as opposed to a virtue done in accord with reason? There is then the question of whether the lion is opposing the maiden or willingly submitting to its mistress's touch, as would be expected from a tame lion. In the latter case, even if the lion was tame her action would show fortitude, in that the lion still has the power to harm or kill the maiden. In art of that time and previous centuries, an Internet search yields several comparable examples, two of which are reproduced above, along with the card at far right. The first, one of the four cardinal virtues as depicted on the tomb of Pope Clement II in Bamburg Cathedral, is of a maiden who appears to look into a lion's mouth, holding its mouth open as she does so, while the lion has his front legs on her knees. The second is from Chartres Cathedral, on the right portal of the north side (second column on the left side below, near the bottom); it has been shown to be of the young Samson with the lion, as we will see shortly. However it is not yet clear that it is also an example of Fortitude as characterized by Aquinas.

The image at Chartres has been carefully analyzed by Adolph Katzenellenbogen in his book The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral; Christ, Mary, Ecclesia (John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1959, p. 70 and figure 60). Above the image in question we see Samson getting the honey from the carcass and above that, Katzenellenbogen says, Samson carrying the gate of Gaza, which he picked up and moved, so as to intimidate his enemies who were waiting there for him.

Allegorically, Katzenellenbogen says, the killing of the lion is the overcoming of evil. He cites the Glossa ordinaria, in iudices, XIV, 5, P.L. CXIII, col 531: "Samson...leonem occidit; et Christus Ecclesium vocaturus de gentibus diobolum vicit," which means "Samson ... killed the lion; and when Christ summoned [gave birth to] his Church [choosing it] among the nations, he vanquished the devil" (thanks to Andrea Vitali for his help here). This interpretation, as part of the plan of the portal, is confirmed by the story of Gideon featured on the other side of the portal. Gideon, paralleling Samson's killing of the lion, makes an offering on the former altar of the Canaanite God Baal. "Both overcome evil in this way," Katzenellenbogen says (p. 70). The other two in each also correspond. Also, Baal is featured on the bottom of the Gideon series, just as the lion is featured in the same place at the bottom of the Samson series.

But how is it that this image expresses the cardinal virtue of fortitude? Why should rejecting the Devil and accepting Christ be an expression of that virtue? 

Also, a peculiarity of the image at Chartres is that Samson is not shown exerting much effort in vanquishing the lion; he seems merely to be playing with its jaws. In contrast, Judges 14:6 says, "He tore the lion as he would have torn a kid in pieces." It was apparently an easy matter; but if so, how does that express Fortitude? Courage is different from the performance of a task, even that of killing a dangerous animal, if it is known to be easy to do. "Grave danger" has to be involved (according to Aquinas), including the danger of death. 

This question is relevant not only to the Visconti image, as we shall see, but also, at least from the mid-17th century, in the French versions that followed, and preserved even in the occultist versions of the 19th and 20th century.

One answer to these questions lies in questioning the assumption that Samson knew beforehand that he would have the strength to kill the lion so easily. As far as he was concerned, it was a "grave danger" requiring him to "curb his fear" and face the lion. Then "the spirit of God entered Samson," enabling him to accomplish the task; but that this would happen was no means certain. With a young and presumably non-muscular girl, facing an attacking lion instead of a presumably non-attacking baby goat, with her bare hands instead of a spear or club, and grasping its most dangerous part, the jaws, the image emphasizes even more the "grave danger" that is being faced. That is the essence of the cardinal virtue Fortitude.

Then there is the issue of whether it is courage that is being represented, or recklessness/rashness,  which for Aquinas was an excess, i.e. a vice, and not a virtue. In some situations that would be the case. But Samson had no choice. Given that "a young lion met him, raging and roaring" (Judges 14:5), fleeing would have been fruitless, while standing one's ground often dissuades an animal from attacking. What he had to do was to curb his fear and hope that God would help him. 

There are milder images that could have been used for the virtue. For example, Giotto had used the most typical one, that of a soldier with a shield and a sword or lance (near right, c. 1305 Padua). The image does not show the danger he is facing, but presumably it is one or more other soldiers similarly equipped. There is an image of a lion on her shield, but that identifies the lion with the possessor of the shield and not her opponent. There is no courage in just standing there, of course; but it is courageous all the same, because the person is prepared to face "grave danger" and the threat of death if the occasion demands it. Unlike the images of Samson and the lion, that aspect is not shown directly by Giotto.. The image of a girl with the lion, putting his or her hands on the lion's most dangerous part, as in countless depictions of Samson, makes the idea of courage/moral fortitude more vivid than in Giotto's image. It shows both the "grave danger" and the firm response that Fortitude requires, that of "curbing fear," in a very focused and dynamic way. Hence the Visconti (far right above) is more vivid and actually truer to the virtue in what it actually shows, namely, someone exhibiting fortitude. However, with the girl on the card, especially as later images of Samson consistently emphasize his physical prowess (e.g. Rubens, 17th century, above left), there is the problem that she is shown increasingly gentler and less muscular and forceful (above right, Noblet 1660s and Conver 1761, the latter a design that goes back at least to the beginning of that century). As such, she is no Samson and is surely not able to block the lion's jaws with her hands alone. Thus without some other interpretation it would seem that the image illustrates reckless daring rather than courage. 

 

There are a number of possible solutions: (1) Like Samson, the girl hopes God will give her the necessary strength to overcome the lion. (2) The girl is deliberately sacrificing herself to draw the lion there, where the hunters can lower a net they have previously placed above that spot: (3) It is only an allegory about "curbing fear", which is the most important aspect of the virtue, rather than  "moderating daring"; (4) The lion is induced not to attack, in admiration for the girl's courage; (5) the girl has trained the lion  not to attack her; and (6) the allegory is not about the cardinal virtue, which is a "special virtue" in Aquinas's sense, but about fortitude in his broader sense, of firmness against the passions and instincts when they go against what reason requires, with the lion representing these passions and the lady the force of reason to block them.

The interpretation in (1) may work in the 15th century, for people familiar with images like that at Chartres or Bamberg, but by 17th Paris, the contrast between the gentle maiden of the card and the muscular, aggressive Samson is too great to be ignored. (2) compares her to the early martyrs of the Church, whose sacrifice shows the seriousness of their belief, which will eventually win out over their persecutors. However now the problem is that the lion does not look like it is about to devour the lady (3) needs no explanation, but more seems to be going on, and it contradicts an important defining aspect of the virtue. (4) draws on the apparent implication that unless the animal were indeed letting her grasp its jaws of its own free will, it would never give the lady such an opportunity as we see on the card

In the case of (5), it is not only the lion that must be trained, but also the girl, to overcome her fear in the course of the training. The lion is given rewards when it succeeds in curbing its fear, and punishments when it fails to restrain its impulse to attack, in gradually increasing increments of proximity on the part of the girl. The girl meanwhile reduces her fear based on her experience of the animal. In addition, just as a lion can learn to trust a person's touch, so the person touching can develop trust, along with courage, through positive experiences of increasingly heightened fearful situations. This alternative emphasizes a point made by Aristotle that the development of a virtue includes training in its exercise. 

However, it is hard to imagine that by reward and punishment alone, the lion could possibly show such restraint as we see on the card. The training would seem to require the building of trust and respect between the lady and the lion. Such training and trust, once established, reduces significantly the amount of courage required on the part of either. In that case it is not the lady alone who represents Fortitude, but the mutually supporting combination of the two, as in Plato's well-organized state, in which the guardians (the military) trust the rulers to lead and vice versa, and the same in the soul, where reason leads and the "spirited part" defends.

The difference between (6) and the rest is a subtle one. In (5), the issue is curbing fear and daring only; in (6) it is curbing not only fear and daring, but also anger and lust, and not just sexual lust, but that for vengeance, power, over-eating, strong drink, and all sorts of satisfactions that reason recognizes as harmful to a life lived well. Firmness against such temptations is fortitude in a general sense, a requirement of every virtue, as opposed to the cardinal virtue, which is only about fear and daring, to curb the first and moderate the second. However in the context of the whole sequence, with Temperance and Justice also present, it is the cardinal virtue and not the general aspect of all virtue that needs to be emphasized.

Thus, of these alternatives, (4) and (5) are the ones that seem to fit the card the best, especially in France by the 18th century, because there seems to be some sort of positive connection of the lion to the lady, such that it willingly submits to the lady's grasping of his jaws.

There are also other situations involving a person confronting a lion besides that of Samson, which add their nuances to the card, once the applicability of Samson is less tenable  Most notable are the stories of Jerome and Androcles and their lions, in which there is clearly a bond between man and lion.

St. Jerome's confrontation with a lion is told in The Golden Legend (for which is the above, from Northern Italy, by the "Master of the Murano Gradual," second quarter of the 15th century), both well known, the former throughout the Middle Ages and the latter since the 13th century. In Jerome’s legend, a lion walks into the monastery and sends the monks running; but Jerome, curbing his fear, notices the limp and stays as the lion presents its foot for examination (https://www.fisheaters.com/animals3.html). Thereafter the lion protects Jerome, while Jerome helps the lion to adjust to civilization.

Androcles, in another legend well known in the Middle Ages, is an escaped slave who takes refuge in a cave, where a lion also lives. This lion, too, needs a thorn removed from its paw, for which Androcles offers his help. Later he is sent to the arena to be devoured by lions. The lion remembers him and not only desists from attacking him but keeps all the other lions away from him as well.

The idea that the lion fails to attack out of admiration for the woman's courage or other merits is exemplified in the "unicorn tapestries", done in the 15th century, on a French commission, and currently in the Cluny Museum of Paris In each of six tapestries, a lion stands on one side and a unicorn on the other, both adoring the lady in the center.

Putting the lion and the unicorn together would seem to be a reference to Psalm 21:22, which says, “Save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns” (salva me ex ore leonis et de cornibus unicornium exaudi me). Lions and unicorns seem to be a metaphor for those who would imprison or kill the psalmist. Besides humans, symbolically that could be God, in wrath, or the Devil, in triumph.

In the tapestry, however, neither the lion nor the unicorn seems to have any threatening intent. Part of an explanation is another reference made by the tapestries, to a legend recounted by Isadore of Seville. He says that the “unicorn” is the rhinoceros, the most unstoppable of beasts, yet if a virgin should open its lap to it, it would meekly put its head there and lose its ferocity (Etymologies XII, 12-13, accessible online). This would seem to be a Christian allegory with erotic elements. In that sense, the psalmist would be praying to God’s mercy to save him from God’s wrath. Somehow the lady, in overcoming her fear enough to allow the unicorn to its lap, transforms a god of wrath to a god of mercy.

In fact, the lion has a long history as the allegorical representation of God as well as the Devil. In Isaiah 31:4 The Lord says that "Like as the lion roareth, and the lions whelp upon his prey" he will protect Israel. Likewise Hosea 13:8 has the Lord say, "I will devour them there as a lion."  And of Christ, Rev. 5:5 says "behold the lion of the tribe of Judah."

Guillaume Le Clerc wrote similarly of the lion in his Bestiaire of 1210, which in some manuscripts comes with an image of the beast and his family (trans. L. Oscar Kuhns, ed. Charles Dudley Warner, Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol 4, International Society, New York, 1896, online):

IT is proper that we should first speak of the nature of the lion, which is a fierce and proud beast and very bold. It has three especially peculiar characteristics. In the first place it always dwells upon a high mountain. From afar off it can scent the hunter who is pursuing it. And in order that the latter may not follow it to its lair it covers over its tracks by means of its tail. Another wonderful peculiarity of the lion is that when it sleeps its eyes are wide open, and clear and bright. The third characteristic is likewise very strange. For when the lioness brings forth her young, it falls to the ground, and gives no sign of life until the third day, when the lion breathes upon it and in this way brings it back to life again.

The meaning of all this is very clear. When God, our Sovereign father, who is the Spiritual lion, came for our salvation here upon earth, so skillfully did he cover his tracks that never did the hunter know that this was our Savior, and nature marveled how he came among us. By the hunter you must understand him who made man to go astray and seeks after him to devour him. This is the Devil, who desires only evil.

When this lion was laid upon the Cross by the Jews, his enemies, who judged him wrongfully, his human nature suffered death. When he gave up the spirit from his body, he fell asleep upon the holy cross. Then his divine nature awoke. This must you believe if you wish to live again. When God was placed in the tomb, he was there only three days, and on the third day the Father breathed upon him and brought him to life again, just as the lion did to its young.

This is a free translation, the translator tells us, to avoid the many repetitions, from an original written in Norman French. The points are obvious enough, and these three traits of the lion are also in Isadore, Etymologies, Book 12, 2:3-6, thus probably in many such works. (These quotations are all at http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast78.htm and the links there.)

I surmise that the lion's positive allegorical meaning, including the representation as God or Christ, is why so many nobles and royals adopted it as their heraldic. Of course there was also the other part, God's physical power, that they wanted to associate with. But the bestiary shows quite clearly the other aspect of the lion, the identification between him and the physical Christ who hides from the hunter (the devil, etc.), never relaxes his vigilance, and dies on the cross.

Where the lady fits in such a conception of the lion is similar to her place in the "Unicorn Tapestries." There the lion, as Christ, becomes meek when a Virgin allows it to put its horn or feet--i.e. its most dangerous part, but also suggesting the sexual part--in her lap. It is this God who, by entering Mary's womb, has gone through the experience of being human and is transformed by this relationship. In medieval Christianity, however, this transformation goes beyond merely being the means by which God takes material form.

This further transformation at the hands of a lady is expressed by a 13th century monk named Conrad of Saxony, in a text mistakenly attributed to St. Bonaventure, an Italian of the same century, and thus probably read widely in Italy (WorldCat says it was first printed in 1476). Conrad argues that the relationship of Christ, to the Virgin Mary is that of David placated by Abigail. The analogy is that just as Abigail bravely confronts an angry David, with David mollifying his anger in admiration of Abigail (whom he eventually marries), so Christ's anger at sinners is mollified by the pleas and merits of the Virgin Mary.

The story, in I Samuel Ch. 25, is that David, in the hills with 400 followers, had sent messengers to Abigail’s husband Nabal asking for provisions for his men, since he had protected Nabal and his flocks from raiders during the winter. Nabal not only refused but derogated David as a person of no significance (which at that time he was, having been expelled from Saul's court). Abigail intervened by going to David with even more provisions than he expected and asking forgiveness for Nabal’s behavior. Here is Conrad (https://www.ewtn.com/library/SOURCES /MIRROR.TXT):

(Maria benedicta est, quia per eam Deus homini placabilis est, sicut signatum est in Abigail, de qua legitur primi Eegum vigesimo quinto, quod cum David offensus occidere vellet Nabal stultum, Abigail occurrens offenso placavit eum. Qui placatus dixit: Benedictum eloquium tuum, et benedicta tu, quae prohibuisti me hodie, ne irem ad sanguinem et ulciscerer me manu mea. Nabal stultus signat peccatorem; omnis enim peccator stultus est. Sed heu! sicut dicitur Ecclesiastae primo: Stultorum infinitus est numerus. Abigail Mariam signat, interpretatur enim patris mei exsultor tio. quanta Patris caelestis in Maria et Mariae in Patre caelesti fuit exsnltatioj cum ipsa dixit (4) : Exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo! Sicut antem Abigail dominam nostram, sic David Dominum nostrum signat. David antem offensns est Nabal stulto, quando Dominus offensns est homini impio. David Nabal stulto per Abigail placatur, quando Dominus impio per Mariam reconciliatnr. Abigail placavit David verbis et muneribus, Maria placat Dominum precibus et meritis. Abigail ultionem temporalem, Maria vero aeternalem convertit, dum illa humanum, ista vero divinum gladium avertit.) (Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) prope Florentiam, ex typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae (Rome), 1904, Cap. XV, p. 203, https://archive.org/details/speculumbeataem00brungoog)

I say that Mary is blessed because by her, God was induced to be favorable to man, as is signified in the example of Abigail, of whom we read, that when David, being angry, wanted to kill the fool Nabal, Abigail, meeting him half-way, appeased him; who being appeased, said: "Blessed be thy speech, and blessed be thou, who hast kept me to-day from coming to blood, and revenging me with my own hand" (I Kings XXV, 32 f.) The fool Nabal signifies the sinner; for every sinner is a fool. But, alas, as it is said in Ecclesiasticus: "The number of fools is infinite" (I, 15). Abigail signifies Mary, for the name is interpreted, "joy of the father." Oh, how great was the joy of the heavenly Father in Mary, and that of Mary in the heavenly Father, when she herself said: "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior." As Abigail typifies Our Lady, so David typifies Our Lord. For David was offended by the fool Nabal, when the Lord was offended by guilty man. David was appeased by the fool Nabal, when the Lord was appeased and reconciled to guilty man by Mary. Abigail appeased David by words and gifts; Mary appeased the Lord by her prayers and merits. Abigail turned away temporal vengeance, but Mary turned away that which was eternal; the former averted the sword of man, the latter, that of God.

Because of Britain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, the word “appeased”—in Latin, placavit, placated--has gotten a bad name, as a sign of weakness. However for Conrad, Arigail's action is not surrendering to unjust demands, but rather honoring what should be honored (even if to us it sounds uncomofortatly like a "protection racket"), while appealing to the other’s charitableness for past errors. Also, it seems to me, correcting her husband's error is in itself an act of courage, as David was already in a rage and bent on slaughter; moreover, since she had opposed her husband, she might be in for considerable punishment at home. Likewise Mary prays for humanity's forgiveness.

It is now rather easy to see the lady on the card as in the position of Abigail and Mary, and the lion in the position of Christ and David, that is, desisting from destructive action out of admiration for the lady's bravery and merits.

I see the same idea in some of Shakespeare. The closest is the wrathful Lear who experiences privation and vulnerability for the first time, remembers his daughter Cordelia's courageous words of rebuke, and is in the process of transforming--not completely to a king of mercy, but on that road, and at least a king of humility. There is also Corialanus, who arrogantly fights his native city Rome because of perceived slights but realizes his error upon hearing the pleas of his mother and wife, who have traveled to the enemy camp to speak with him. Another example is the "bed trick" in All's Well That Ends Well, in which the arrogant nobleman Bertrand is forced by the king to marry his commoner childhood playmate Helena but refuses to have anything to do with her. Instead he goes to Florence with the army. At the end of the play he is shown proof that a supposed prostitute he had slept with there in the dark was actually his wife; suddenly, lost in admiration, he loves her madly. There are probably other examples. And of course there is "Beauty and the Beast," where a young woman’s gentle ways tame a beast of a man (at least in the Disney versions) who is eventually transformed by her love.

A variation is that of Cupid and Psyche as told by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, 2nd century c.e. but always in circulation and one of the earliest books to be printed in Italy, 1469. Cupid corresponds to the Beast. The oracle at Delphi says that the beautiful princess Psyche must be taken to the top of a high mountain, where she will meet her future husband, a monster. It is actually Cupid, who has her whisked away to his palace to enjoy a secret affair with her. It brings him suffering, thanks to her spilling the oil from her lamp onto his sleeping form when she breaks his rule never to look upon him in the light. Wounded, he flies away to the house of his mother Venus. Psyche goes to her, too, to find him, and the goddess sets her four impossible tasks. Her fortitude - not physical strength - in accomplishing them relates by association to Cupid's recovery from the burning, which  brings him to rescue her from death and turn an affair into marriage.

So these are my alternative readings of the "Samson and the lion" depiction of Fortitude, that goes beyond the Old Testament story to see the lion as willingly submitting itself to the lady's will, in an act of courage by both parties, which while acknowledging the lion's desructive power is on a moral rather than physical level.. Moreover, for both parties, what is emphazied is fortitude as repression of fear rather than of daring, which Aquinas said was the principal aspect of the virtue and in fact the more difficult of the two, since unlike attack it does not try to remove the source of the fear. The curbing of fear happens for both the lady and the lion. The lady overcomes her fear of the lion and its jaws. The lion overcomes its fear of being vulnerable in the presence of unknown and hence, in its "survival of the fittest" world, potentially great danger.

3. The Man Beating a Lion with a Club

 In a late 15th century version of the card, the lady is now a man, and he is unambiguously beating a cowering small lion with a club (below, far right). This card is one of six included with the earlier Visconti-Sforza cards, which were done in the 1450s, but by a second artist in a later 15th century styly. Since they are hand-painted in a careful way, they surely were done for the private use of someone of some position, probably as replacement or supplemental cards to the rest of the Visconti-Sforza deck.

As Ross Caldwell has shown (http://www.trionfi.com/0/i/r/11.html), the iconography is probably related to that of the Astrolabium Planum of Johann Angelus, first published in Augsburg of 1488 and then again in Venice of 1494 (although without illustrations it was available earlier, as the text is that of 13th century work by Petrus de Abano, published in 1474 Mantua and in manuscript before that). In particular, the card its interpretation of the 26th degree of Libra, which it gives as Victor Belli, Victor in War, showing a man beating a lion (near right); the likeness to the card is unmistakable.

“Sforza” means “force” or “fortitude”. Besides being a legitimate spelling of  “Forza,” one name for the card, “Sforza” was first applied to Francesco Sforza’s father Muzio Attendola by his men, for his stalwartness and quick thinking in the face of great danger. In that case the card, in a later style than the oriignal cards of the deck, might have been commissioned by one of the sons of Francesco Sforza, as a commemoration of him and of his line. In this case, the lion might have been seen as representingVenice, whose emblem was the lion of St. Mark; Francesco did outgun and outmaneuver Venice in his successful attainment of power in Milan. 

If so, and if news of the card got back to Venice, the implication would have been incredibly tactless, in that it shows a Venetian lion cowering under the blows of Milan as Hercules. (The killing of the Nemean lion was the first of that Greek hero’s legendary “labors.” That pagan hero had already been associated with Fortitude by Nicola Pisano in his sculptures for the altarpiece of Pisa Cathedral in 1260, showing Hercules as a standing nude with a lion skin slung over his shoulder. The club was
another of his attributes.) 

Francesco Sforza himself would surely have been more astute than to commission a card meant to make fun of Venice. In the original of the Visconti-Sforza deck, which he or his wife surely commissioned, there is even a Lion of St. Mark (with its characteristic halo) on the shield of the King of Swords, surely a reference to Venice (at left, from the Morgan Library website).

Alternatively, it is quite possible, as "Iolon" on TarotWheel suggests (https://www.tarotwheel.net/history/the%20individual%20trump%20cards/la%20fortezza.html), that the man is not looking at the lion, but at some unseen enemy off the card. In that case the lion either symbolizes Milan's strength or else the alliance with Venice to secure the peace against enemies outside northern Italy. It might even symbolize the strength of Venice itself, since the lion was a symbol of that city. In that case the presence of the Lion of St. Mark on the King of Swords might indicate that the deck was a copy made for a Venetian family, with the "Hercules" card a replacement card for whatever was there for Fortitude originally, or possibly completed a deck of fewer than 22 special cards that had never had Fortitude in the first place. 

This particular card is in a late 15th century style, 1470 or later. If so, it may well be a memorial to Francesco Sforza by one of his sons, with the hint that the son is just as fearsome. These successor dukes were not known for their relationship skills. First was Galeazzo Maria, who was assassinated by his own companions, probably for his tyrannical appropriation of noblewomen. Then came Ludovico, who after executing the chancelor who had served the family faithfully, usurped the power of his nephew and probably had him murdered. Then he unilaturally allied himself with France, underestimating the ally's ability to take advantage of the situation. Not only did the French seize Milan and imprison Ludovico (after which he soon died), but the peninsula was plunged into subservience to one great power or another from then on. Imprudent daring is an illusory fortitude.

Both Hercules and Samson are examples of moral fortitude together with physical fortitude, the latter aided by a divine source. In Hercules' case, his physical strength came from being the son of Jupiter. In Samson's case, it is from God. Judges 14:5-6 has it that when the lion "met him roaring and raging," then "the spirit of God came upon him." So the idea may have been, despite Aristotle's warnng about rashness, that God will give great strength to those who dare. Indeed, Christ was seen as the predicted savior of Isaiah, whom he called "the spirit of might" (Isaiah 11:2: Hebrew, ugeburah, Vulgate fortitudinus). This fortitudo then passes to those who accept Christ in their hearts. 1 John 2:14 calls believers strong, ischyroi in Greek, with the word of God within them (http://www.latinvulgate.com/lv/verse.aspx?t=1&b=23&c=2):

scripsi vobis adulescentes quia fortes estis et verbum Dei in vobis manet et vicistis malignum

(I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one).

They are able to hold out against the temptations of the Evil One, thanks to the word of God. (I owe this citation to Andrea Vitali in his online essay "La Forza", already cited). But this is moral strength, not physical, just as Christ did not resist evil at the crucifixion but withstood it spiritually, a virtue all the more admirable because as God he would have had the power to end it.

Another card that seems to show the lion as the Evil One, or at least an enemy of good, is in the so-called Cary Sheet, of around 1500 and from either Milan or France (at left above). The surviving card fragment shows a young woman pushing down a lion with her hand on the top of its head. The design is similar to that in a 14th century illumination of the seven virtues and the seven liberal arts (the second lady from the top left) by Niccolò da Bologna (codex ms. B42 N. f, Novella super quinque libros decretalium, now in the Ambrosian Library in Milan; thanks to Andrea Vitali in his online essay "La Forza" for this reference.)  Bologna was for some of the 14th century under the domination of Milan.

That it is a woman is because all the virtues were portrayed as women, probably because the words for them were feminine gender in Latin and Italian. This was true in manuscripts such as the one just considered, as much as in playing cards. However, the Visconti-Sforza card is not the only one, probably by the late 15th and early 16th century, to portray the virtue as a man. A 16th century sheet of Ferrara or Venice now in Budapest shows a person wrestling a lion (near right). The hair appears relatively short, so probably a man. Also, when a woman was shown with a lion, it was not wrestling it, a manner that conforms more to depictions of Samson or Hercules then, of which there were many. It fit the spirit of the times, one of conquest both of nature and other humans by means of brute strength achieved through new weapons of war and tools of investigation. This masculine imagery does not emphasize moral strength in relation to a physically stronger opponent.

In France of the 16th-18th century,  it was always a woman and a lion; surviving  decks do not show a man fighting a lion again until the 19th century. It may have started in France sometime after 1781, in the so-called “Grandpère” Tarot (Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 336-337). An example is the "Ancient Tarot of Lombardy," above center. Others are those of K. Kumppenberg, Milan, 1807-1816, and Johann Georg Rosch, 1831-1838, Diessenhofen, Switzerland, later taken over by AG Müller & Cie., Schafhausen, as seen at right abpve, in a French-language version of 1870 (Ibid., pp. 346-347, pp. 364-365). It is Hercules or Samson using his superior force against an implacable foe. These are very much in the tradition of the 16th century sheet.

With the lion, the card appeared in the sequence as the middle of the three virtues, the first or second card after Justice, so eighth or ninth, in Lombardy, and ninth, the third after Temperance, in Ferrara and Venice. In France, where the order was a variant on the Lombard, it became eleventh, switching places with the Hermit, which had been eleventh. In that form it was reintroduced into Italy in the late eighteenth century.

4. The lady with the column

Another type of depiction of Fortitude in the early tarot, also starting in 15th century Italy, shows a maiden next to a column that is either broken (at left in the so-called Charles VI Tarot) or still intact. The broken column is clearly a reference to Samson as destroyer of the temple of the God Dagon (Judges 16:29), his self-sacrifice in service to the God who had given him his fabulous strength. That he himself is compared to a lion is indicated by the locks of hair that needed to grow back before he was able to perform the deed, similar to a lion’s mane. The self-sacrifice of course makes him a clear precursor to Christ.

This image of fortitude combines physical and moral strength, in a self-sacrificial way that is also loosely comparable to Hercules’ death in Greek mythology, but without Samson’s voluntary self-sacrifice. Hercules dies as a result of his wife’s betrayal,and uses his strength in the end not against “idol worship” but to drag himself to his funeral pyre so as to secure his immortality. This part of his myth was rarely illustrated and of course does not involve grasping any columns. 

The broken column also appears in the Forteza card of the so-called Mantegna Tarot (which is neither a tarot, nor, most likely, by Mantegna), late 1460s (far left). It is the same identification with Samson, made evident by the lion-face on her chest and the lion who stands meekly next to her, dwarfed by her great size. It also appears in the expanded tarot known as minchiate, originating in Florence. In this deck, as well as in the shorter version in that city, the three tarot virtues are all one after after Love. Minchiate has Prudence and the theological virtues the four other virtues are put after the Devil. Some minchiate decks, such as the "tarocco d'Etruria" (at right above) have what appears to be a broken column, in that the lady has picked it up and put it on her lap. I suspect humorous intent, taking advantage of the column's phallic shape.

An intact column appears in the Rosenwald tarot (far left), in the "Al Leone" Tarocchino Bolognese (center left), and some minchiates. The first is early 16th century, while the the second and third are from 17th century, probably reflecting earlier designs. The intact column suggests Aquinas's characterization of fortitude as “immovable” against opposing forces. 

In all three of these decks, Fortezza is one of three virtues in a row after Love. In Bologna, it was the highest of the three. In Minchiate, it was second highest. In the Rosenwald it is hard to tell which it was, because it and Justice have the same number, a backwards 8 in Roman numerals; however, its position on the sheet, the furthest to the left in an order that goes from right to left, suggests that it was the highest and misnumbered, on a sheet that was never converted to individual cards.

5. 16th century texts: Piscina, Anonymous, and Ripa

There are also early writings about the symbolism of the card: two discorsi, both of around 1565. One is by Francesco Piscina, writing in Piedmont, while the other is anonymous and from somewhere in Central Italy (both are in con il occhi e l'intelletto:Explaining the Tarot in Sixteenth Century Italy, edited and translated by Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis and Marco Ponzi, available through Lulu, 2018). We don't know whether the image on the card was someone with a lion or a lady with a column, but it was surely one or the other.

For Piscina it is the card after Justice and therefore, he says, it shows that Justice is in need of Strength (or Force) in order to carry out its determinations (Caldwell et al, p. 19):

La Giustitia, da se stessa essere debile, ch’abbi bisogno di Fortezza ad esser secondo le leggi e constitutione governata..
(“\Justice, being weak on its own, needs Strength to be ruled according to laws and constitutions.) 

The ethical value attaching to the card is in this presentation from the preceding card, Justice, and has none of its own. It is merely the strong arm of the law. In contrast, the cardinal virtue of Fortitude is the overcoming of fear in the right amount, neither too much nor too little; it is the morality intrinsic to that virtue, which Piscina says nothing about.

The anonymous Discorso again sees the card in purely physical terms. After the Pope, “Prudence follows, then Strength,” the author says. Presumably the titles are not yet on the cards, and he has mistaken the Temperance card for Prudence, since he never mentions a card named Temperance. He continues: “The one is a virtue of the soul, the other of the body.” Among powerful people, he says, some desire Prudence, to learn knowledge of past and future as well as present so as to attain their ambitions. “Others desire extreme strength of body, an immense valour, being invincible, the only ones who can tear lions to pieces, kill snakes, defeat armies, conquer kingdoms and to be admired, feared, and respected by all the trembling others” (Caldwell et al, p. 55). There is nothing of the cardinal virtue Fortitude here, just force.

In 1593 Cesare Ripa published a famous emblem book, the Iconologia, which in subsequent editions included allegorical pictures. One emblem that he describes but does not illustrate features a lady with a lion, surely with her hands on the lion's mouth and nose (1611 ed., p. 181; I again thank Andrea Vitali in his essay "La Forza" for pointing out this image):

A woman who with a club similar to that of Hercules suffocates a large lion, & at her feet there is a quiver with arrows, & bow; this figure I drew from a beautiful medal; see Piero [Valeriano] in book I”. 

This might associate the woman on the card with Hercules, even if the card has no quiver, club, or suffocation. He offers no explanation of the allegory, but since it occurs in the section called Fortezza, i.e. "Strength", either physical or moral, it probably shows someone with both, and since she is a woman, her physical strength, like Samson's, comes from God.

In the same section he also has the image of a man reaching into the throat of a lion, so as to cut out its tongue (near right). This is in the context of a story about a friend of Alexander the Great. Alexander sentences him to die by being eaten by a lion, for the crime of allowing another man the opportunity to commit suicide instead of being tortured to death. After the lion is killed, Alexander pardons the friend. While the act depicted could easily be seen as an example of fortitude, Ripa uses it to illustrate "ardor of magnanimity", referring to the act of allowing the suicide despite Alexander's wish otherwise. 

In fact none of the cards show a man reaching for the tongue of a lion in order to kill it. In contrast, the 18th century Parisian edition of Ripa seems to exaggerate the man's grasp into the throat (far right above), perhaps to distinguish it from the lady with lion, the early Visconti image as adopted, since the 17th century, by the tarot in France (at right, the Visconti card at near right, then the Noblet, 1660s Paris, as restored by Flornoy, and the Conver 1761 as reproduced by Héron from a copy in the  Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris).

Otherwise Ripa uses a lady with a lion in a variety of contexts, none of which has her touching its mouth. With a bridled lion, the combination is Ethics and Reason, and with a man "Dominion over Self." A lady with an old lion and no bridle is "Reason of State". A lady with a lunging lion, is Severity, but with a cornocopia Magnanmity. And so on. (For fifteen examples of lions in the 1611 edition, each with a different meaning, see https://books.google.com/books?id=AsZIAAAAcAAJ&q=leone#v=snippet&q=leone&f=false.)

Ripa has no examples of broken columns, but several of intact ones, all firmly anchored. For Constancy (at right), he says (1611 ed., p. 99):

Una donna, che con il destro braccio tenghi abbracciata una colonna, & con la sinistra mano uná spada ignuda sopra d'un gran vaso di fuoco acceso , & mostri volontariamente di volersi abbrugiare la mano, & il braccio.

(A lady who holds her right arm braced against a column, & with the left hand a naked sword above a great fire-pot, & showing her voluntarily willing to burn her hand and & arm.”) . 

This is much like Aquinas on “firmness of mind”, the willingness to endure life’s afflictions, even death, to act in accord with reason. Ripa says of it (p. 98):

Et esser costante non e altro, che stare appoggiato, e saldo nelle ragioni, che muovono l'intelletto a qualche cosa.

(And to be constant is nothing more than to be supported, and firm in the reasons that move the intellect to something.)

Another emblem with a column (no picture) is for “security and tranquility” and has a woman before an altar: her security is from God, Ripa says (1611 ed., p. 480). The next page, for Sicurta (at right), has a picture of a woman crowned with olive leaves, her head resting on her other arm, which in turn rests on a column. It again means firmness, which keeps one in position so as not to be moved, Ripa says. The olive leaves would seem to illustrate “virtu saper visi conservare con honore” (“virtue knowing how to preserve with honor”). The rod “dimostra imperio” (“demonstrates dominion”).

Ripa’s image fits the cards with intact columns, such as the Rosenwald, well enough. However, when a card shows a lady holding a detached column, that change would seem to defeat the interpretation of firmness and make it similar to that of Samson destroying the temple.

6. De Gébelin, Etteilla, and the Occultists

I have already quoted de Gébelin briefly; here is the sum total, under the heading "Cardinal Virtues" ( J. Karlin, Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, p. 23, original pp. 371-2):

N° XI.—Celle-ci représente la FORCE. C’est une femme qui s’est rendue maîtresse d’un lion, et qui lui ouvre la gueule avec la même facilité qu’elle ouvrirait celle de son petit épagneul; elle a sur la tête un chapeau de Bergère.

(No. XI - This one represents STRENGTH. It is a woman who has made herself mistress of a lion & who opens its mouth with the same facility with which she opens the mouth of her little spaniel; she has upon her head a Sheperdess's hat.)

He does not say how she has accomplished this feat.

In 1785, Etteilla, who was the first to write about divination using the tarot, declared that the meaning of the card is that of "être soumis à la vérité des Lois Divines & Humaine" (submitting to the truth of the Divine and Human Laws," Troisieme Cahier [Third Notebook], c. 1785), in other words, the strength to do so. This is much like Augustine and Plato. But his explanation of how to interpret the card when it is in a row with others only has to do with who will vanquish whom (my translation is at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/, original on Gallica, p. 8):

La Force, soit C. B. A.: A, le questionnant; B, la Force; C, un rival du questionnant; celui-ci sera vaincu. Soit B. C. A. aux menaces de A. ... C ira chercher la Force B, & vaincra A.

(Strength, let it be C.B.A.: A, the consultant; B, Strength; C, a rival of the consultant; the latter will be vanquished. Let it be B.C.A.: against the danger of A, . . . C is going to seek Strength B, & vanquish A.

His card, curiously, simply has a lady with a rather bearlike lion next to her (at right).

A book in the Etteilla tradition went so far as to repeat a rumor that Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz had been predicted by way of precisely this card in a reading for Empress Josephine (“Napoléon en fit l'épreuve à la bataille d'Austerlitz, qu'il gagna, ainsi que la lui avait prédit limpératrice Joséphine, avant qu'il partis pour l'armée”, in "Julia Orsini," Le Grand Etteilla, ou l’Art de Tirer les Cartes (The Grand Etteilla, or the Art of Reading the Cards), Lille, Blocquel-Casteaux, 1838, p. 66. "Julia Orsini," surely not coincidentally, is the name of Pope Alexander VI's mistress. The publisher Simon Blocquel merely borrowed a name known by many.

Eliphas Lévi, in 1856, 2nd edition, 1861, describes the card in much de Gebelin's way, but with one change and one extra detail (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Tome 2 (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1861), p. 351; Waite translation as Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual, p. 367, in archive.org):

La main dans l'acte de prendre et de tenir. 
Hiéroglyphe, la force, une femme couronnée du vital et qui ferme paisiblement et sans efforts la gueule d'un lion furieux.

(The hand in the act of grasping and holding.
Heiroglyph. Strength: a woman crowned with the vital ${\displaystyle \infty }$ closes, quietly and without effort, the jaws of a raging lion.)

That the girl is closing rather than opening the mouth is Lévi's innovation. So is the infinity sign. Both were included in the popular tarot designed by A. E. Waite, 1909 (at left below). That symbol for infinity is first found in a mathematical work in England of 1655 (De Sectionibus Conici, p. 4, in Google Books), and did not likely influence the design of the hat she wore on the card then. However, in the later Marseille style the hat becomes closer to the infinity sign, as in Conver, second above on the right. The sign also existed aso a double uroborus, as seen in the Theatrum Chemicum of 1659-661 Strasbourg. Since that was an anthology, it probably existed before then. It showed a man's face in one loop and a woman's on the other (probably sun and moon), thus making it a symbol of the conjunction of the two, supposedly representing sulphur and mercury. (My information comes from https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2012/03/jf-ptak-science-books-the-ouroboros-and-in-this-particular-case-the-double-over-and-under-ouroboros-is-an-interesting-an.html.) At the top of the figure the two ends joining are a lion's head on the left and an eagle's on the right, its beak in the lion's mouth. That image, without the implied antagonism, is also appropriate to the card, given that it has a masculine lion, where the two seem to be of one will. It is also consistent with Case's image (at right below) of a wreath of roses going around both, which he says "is intended to represent a figure 8" (I will give the full quotation later in this post).

In 1863 Paul Christian (birth name Jean-Baptiste Pitois), a follower of Lévi, aimed at grander things, in his book making flattering remarks about his sovereign, Napoleon III, and reminding him of a successful and unexpected prediction he had once made to the Emperor about his fortunes. The Emperor, one story has it, duly summoned a tarot-reader using Christian’s interpretations to the Tuileries Palace. (This information is on one of the extra cards of the Tarot Belline, named for the person who found a notebook and the deck, handmade using Christian’s interpretations, in a Parisian attic. It is now at the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. Its card “La Force” (at right) is simply the standard Tarot of Marseille but with Etteilla's keywords and Christian’s interpretation written on the card.)

If the emperor had drawn the “La Force”, or even meditated on it reading Christian’s book, he could have absorbed Christian’s wisdom regarding what was now "Le Lion Muselé," “The Muzzled Lion”, ruled by Mars and the archangel Samael (L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries, Paris, 1863, p. 96 of 1977 reprint; translation below from Paul Christian The History and Practice of Magic, trans. James Kirkup and Julian Shaw (New York: Citadel Press, 1963), p. 103)

Une jeune fille fermant avec ses mains, sans efforts, la gueule d'un lion. - C'est l'emblème de la force que donne la foi en soi-même. ...Avance avec foi; l'obstacle est un fantôme. Pour pouvoir, il faut croire que l'on peut. Pour devenir fort, il faut imposer silence aux dégoûts de l'esprit, aux faiblesses du coeur; il faut étudier le devoir, que est la règle du droit, et pratiquer la justice comme si on l'amait.

A girl closing with her hands, without effort, the mouth of a lion. It is the emblem of the force that gives faith in oneself. . . . Advance with faith: all obstacles are phantoms. To be able, one must believe that one is able. In order to become strong, silence must be imposed on the repugnances of the mind, the weaknesses of the heart; you must study duty, which is the rule of right, and practice justice as if you loved it

Within only a few years the namesake of the victor of Austerlitz had not only initiated a totally unnecessary and disastrous war with Prussia – slaughter, actually– followed by a humiliating peace, but also destabilized a balance of power in Western Europe that had endured for 55 years. It would not be regained for another 75, at astounding loss of life. Napoleon III died in comfortable if subdued exile in England. The Tuileries Palace was not so fortunate, burned by the Communards in 1871.

In his 1889 Le Tarot des Bohémiens, Papus repeated what Lévi said about the card, with Christian's astrological assignment to Mars but omitting Samael. An interesting addition is that

In it we find the symbolism of the 8th arcanum transferred to the physical plane. It is, in fact, an image of the power given by the sacred science (2nd arcanum) when justly applied (8). (Tarot of the Bohemians, Morton trans., p. 149, in archive.org).

In other words, strength is given when the cause is just.

Wirth's card, first printed in 1889 to accompany Papus's book and reissued with marginal glyphs in 1927 (at right), gives the lady a hat in the shape of the infinity sign and the lion a magnificent tongue that touches the lady's hand as she grasps the top and bottom of its mouth. In this time after World War I, Wirth for once explicitly denied her use of physical force. He says (Tarot of the Magicians, Weiser, York Beach, Maine, 1985, p. 105, in archive.org, trans. of Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age, Paris, 1927, p. 152) that she

sans effort apparent, dompte un lion furieux, dont elle maintient les mâchoires écartées. Cette conception de la Force, en tant que vertu cardinale, s'écarte des figurations banales d'un Hercule appuyé sur sa massue et revêtu de la dépouille du lion de Némée. Ce n'est point la vigueur physique, elle des muscles, que glorifie l'arcane XI; il s'agit de l'exercice d'une puissance féminine, bien plus irrésistible dans sa douceur et sa subtilité que toutes les explosions de la colère et de la force brutale.

without apparent effort tames a furious lion whose jaws she is holding apart. This conception of strength, seen as a cardinal virtue, is remote from the banal representation of a Hercules leaning upon his club and clothed in the spoils of the lion of Nemea. It is not physical strength, nor muscular, which arcanum 11 is extolling. It is concerned with the exercise of feminine strength, much more irresistible in its gentleness and subtlety than any outburst of anger and brute force.

Wirth also took exception to the idea that the objective was to kill the lion, even metaphorically, i.e. killing "the beast within." He compares the lion to the black Sphinx of his Chariot card, which in the Tarot of Marseille had been the horse corresponding to the dark horse of Plato’s Charioteer myth (see my post on The Chariot). Wirth says (Ibid.):

Ce n'est pas une bête malfaisante, en dépit de sa férocité. Livré à lui-même, il accapare, dévore et détruit avec une rage égoïste; il n'en est plus de même s'il est dompté, car, tout comme le Sphinx noir du Chariot (Arc. VII), il rend d'immenses services à qui sait le dominer.”

It is not an evil animal in spite of its ferociousness. Left to itself, it hoards, devours, and destroys with a selfish fury. It is not like this if it is tamed, for, being very like the black Sphinx of the Chariot (arcanum 7) it renders great services to whoever can master it.

Wirth’s invocation of the “black Sphinx” of the Chariot is not inappropriate, in so far as it suggests the domination of morality over purely sensually based instincts. Yet it is puzzling why Wirth should call this power particularly “feminine,” as opposed to “moral,” by which the Christian tradition had distinguished the cardinal virtue from physical strength. Wirth’s word unintentionally opens the door to seeing her in terms of Delilah, whose subtle charm laid Samson low. Such an association would redefine Conrad of Saxony’s “placation of David’s anger by Abigail” and Aquinas’s “moderation of daring by fortitude” (both discussed above) as trickery taking advantage of naivete, an interpretation that also is just beneath the surface in the stories of Hercules and Samson. Such trickery, to be sure, needs to be taken in account, as the example of Hitler proves, but only if it is counterbalanced by an awareness of the other alternative.

Wirth’s perspective on the lion, that of wild energy requiring the discipline of reason, is in line with Ripa’s symbolism of the bridled lion. The infinity sign that Wirth added (starting in his 1889 version) gives the image three parts, probably the traditional spirit, soul, and body. It also suggests Freud’s superego, ego, and id. However, infinity also suggests the En Sof of the Kabbalists, No End, and the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the Christian God. We could also see the lion in relation to God, as articulated by Conrad of Saxony, the Old Testament Yahweh, or Christ before his conversion by Mary. This is as an unpredictable and insecure figure, avenging himself on those who slight him or torturing people via the Devil to test their faith in him, while also of sound if often neglected moral instincts that can be appealed to by a Job or Virgin Mary.

It is not quite the lion of Androcles and St. Jerome, which may look aggressive but is just asking for help that will earn its gratitude. But neither is it Wirth’s lion whose fury can only be subdued by the imposition of one will upon another, however gently. It is more a question of two opposing forces each potentially strengthened by the other.

We might think again of “Beauty and the Beast,” the 18th century French fairy tale, where Beast’s love for the virtuous Beauty, a love made mature by his suffering and Beauty’s fortitude, turns the callousness of the former devil-may-care bachelor (in the 1756 Beaumont and 1990/2017 Disney versions) into an exemplar of humility and devotion. It is yet another variation on the old idea, seen for example in the “Lady and the Unicorn” and Conrad of Saxony’s interpretation of Abigail and David. 

The Golden Dawn exchanged the positions of Justice and Strength, the main reason being that in the order of the Sefer Yetzirah's "simple letter" assignments of letters (which were also numbers) to zodiacal assignments, Strength would thereby get Leo and Justice would get Libra. Astrology could then amplify the meanings of the cards. Waite and Case both accept that change.

For Waite it is the woman's "beneficent fortitude" that subdues the lion, whose mouth she is closing (a departure from the Tarot of Marseille, where if anything she is opening it). It "is connected with the Divine Mystery of Union," but it is not the union of masculine and feminine that he has in mind, at least explicitly, but "the confidence of those whose strength is God, who have found their refuge in Him." He has added a chain of flowers that she holds to her body; it "signifies, among many other things, the sweet yoke and the light burden of Divine Law, when it has been taken into the heart of hearts." Presumably she will be putting it on the lion; it "signifies the passions, and she who is called Strength is the higher nature in its liberation.) (All at https://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktar08.htm.)

Case says of this lady, who for him is the response in subconsciusness of the suggestions given by superconsciousness. She follows the Charioteer of self-consciousness giving suggestions to subconsciousness; in her case (Tarot Fundamentals, 1936, lesson 20, pp. 1-2, in archive.org):

She symbolizes the subconsciousness, controlling and directing the functions of our body's organs, and directing the currents of Prana, the vital energy of life. The  changes to our personality direct changes to body structure and chemistry. These changes make possible the practical applicaton of the potencies of superconscious life.

The infinity sign connects her with superconscious, as in the case of the Magician, who represents self-consciousness. The number 8 when written makes a serpentine path, and "from time immemorial, the serpent has been a symbol of immortality and and eternity. . . . It is also a symbol for the Holy Spirit, sometimes described as feminine" (lesson 19, p. 6).

The wreath in Case's image now goes around the lion's neck. Case says it also goes around her waist (lesson 20, p. 3):

The chain of roses which goes round the woman's waist and encircles the lion's neck is intended to represent a figure 8, though this is not  very clearly shown in the picture. Roses symbolize desire, hence the chain is a systematic series of desires, woven together, highly cultivated and combined, desires are the most potent form of suggestion. By definite formulation of desire, in harmony with the real nature of things, you ean dominate the mighty forces of nature below the human level of activity.

These desires are presumably formulated by self-consciousness, although Case does not say so in so many words. merely that "she partakes of his [the Magician's] influence, and typifies subconscious reaction to the principle he signifies" (Lesson 20, p. 2). Hence (lesson 20, p. 5):

what is pictured in this Key is the result of nce of intentional, conscious practice. The situation represented by the symbols of tbis Key is not a spontaneous natural development. It is the result of deliberate intentions and purposes consciously formulated. It is the consequence of knowledige consciously acquired.

As for the lion, as king of beasts it "represents the highest forms of development in the kingdoms of nature below the level of man. The lion is the "ruling principle of the animal nature." As for its color, red, the reference is to alchemy, in which (lesson 20, p. 4):

The Green Lion is the animal nature before it has been ripened and purified. The Red Lion is the animal nature  brought under control of the higher aspects of man's spiritual being.

Beyond the Red Lion, which pertains to the Strength card, is the Old Lion, which is the state of consciousness in which "one senses directly the eternal radiant mental energy . . . older than anythng else" (Ibid.) But the Lion of the Strength card is the Red Lion, and as such is colored red, red as the roses and the flowers in the lady's hair (lesson 19, p. 8).

7. Jungian interpretations

In the section of Psychology and Alchemy on "the alchemical taming of the lion and the dragon," Jung cites a text mistakenly attributed to St. Bonaventure (actually by Philipus Picinello, 1680):

"Of a truth God, terrible beyond measure, appeared before the world peaceful and wholly tamed after dwelling in the womb of the most blessed Virgin" (Collected Works vol. 12, para. 522, p. 443). 

This does not mention a lion, but it is again (see above section 2) the Christian meaning of the famous Unicorn Tapestries, in which both a lion and a unicorn (another symbol of Christ) meekly serve a lady, unnamed there but understood to be the Virgin Mary. Jung interprets Picinello's statement, not unfairly, as "the conversion of the Old Testament Jehovah into the God of Love in the New Testament." That is to say, the "terrible" Jehovah entered the womb of Mary and became the "God of Love" (Ibid.). Here "terrible" means "terrifying," "awesome" or "formidable", as opposed to the modern primary meaning of "extremely bad" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrible). We might think of the Old Testament God's floods, earthquakes, fire-bombs, and the like, all directed at those who won't worship him sufficiently. This God is relatively absent from the New Testament before the book of Revelation.

In his later Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung finds evidence of the identity between the Old Testament God and a wild lion in alchemical texts. Analyzing a long alchemical poem by an English cleric named George Ripley, in which an old king revitalizes himself by entering the queen's womb, Jung comments (p. 297, paragraph 405) with the part of most interest to us in bold:

We shall probably not be wrong if we assume that the "king of beasts," known even in Hellenistic times as a transformation stage of Helios, represents the old king, the Antiquus dierum of the Cantelina, at a certain stage of renewal, and that perhaps in this way he accquired the singular title of "Leo antiquus." At the same time he represents the king in his theriomorphic form, that in as he appears in his unconscious state. The animal form emphasizes that the king is overpowered or overlaid by his animal side and consequently expresses himself only in animal reactions, which are nothing but emotions. Emotionality in the sense of uncontrollable affects is essentially bestial, for which reason people in this state can be approached only with the circumspection proper to the jungle.

This is a different interpretation of the "old lion" than Case's, of someone wholly taken over by emotional reaction. The lion, with his "aggressive strength," is a suitable image of that state. The Old Testament God is not entirely of this sort, but it is one of his conditions. 

This animal also, to be sure, also characterizes the Devil. Jung quotes I Peter 3:18: "...your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may desire." In Psychology and Alchemy he says (p. 190. paras. 276-7), describing a dream:

The dreamer is imprisoned in the square enclosure. Lions and a wicked sorceress appear. He cannot get out of the chthonic prison because he is not yet ready to do something that he should. (This is an important personal matter, a duty even, and the cause of much misgiving.) Lions, like all wild animals, indicate latent affects. The lion plays an important part in alchemy and has much the same meaning. It is a "fiery" animal, an emblem of the devil, and stands for the danger of being swallowed by the unconscious.

A famous image from the Rosarium Philosophorum, of a lion - the green lion, colored as such in some manuscripts - swallowing the sun, confirms for Jung this interpretation, with the sun representing consciousness. By "unconscious" I think Jung means the state of unconscious emotionality in which one is taken over by rage, the desire for power, lust, etc., but also, as in the dreamer's personal case, fear. 

Marie-Louise von Franz observes of this image that the analyst will have in his/her office an analysand who "one knows would like to eat up completely the analyst like the lion" - but they "compensate by being very correct, knowing that if they admit their demands the devouring lion will come up." They know from experience that when they did take the risk, they "got  banged on the head. (Alchemy, an introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980, p. 103, in Google Books).

The caged lion knows the fear well. Likewise Oedipus comes to know it, when he learns how he got his swollen ankles. It is precisely the "caging" of aggression that produces this fear, the fear of losing one's well-being and very identity to the other, and consequently a defensive aggressiveness. 

In focusing on an all-powerful God who seemingly has nothing to fear, this aspect is easily lost. But that God does have things to fear. One source of fear is from God's aloneness before he created man, a being intelligent enough to recognize his presence. God needs man's acknowledgement to know he exists; otherwise God is merely his own hypothesis. Another source of fear, threatening his supremacy, is precisely man's moral superiority in the face of adversity, exercising the fortitude of a Job, a fortitude that comes from his relative helplessness and non-comprehension. It is to overcome that fear that God, in Jung's view, becomes man.

The lion, like Oedipus with his "swollen foot" (a Greek euphemism) and also the Christian God, "has an unmistakable erotic aspect." Jung cites an alchemical text (Mysterium, p. 298, para. 408):

"Learn what the doves of Diana are, who conquer the lion with caresses; the green lion, I say, who in truth is the Babylonish dragon, who kills all with his venom." 

In this passage it is the "green lion," who is specified, as "the Babylonish dragon"; this of course is another association withh the Devil, who in the Book of Revelation is precisely this dragon (www.latinvulgate.com/lv/verse.aspx?t=1&b=27&c=12):

12:9. et proiectus est draco ille magnus serpens antiquus qui vocatur Diabolus et Satanas qui seducit universum orbem

And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world.

But this fiery "devil," when integrated, will be a source of strength in the sense of fortitude, the courage to do what one ought. We may think here of Samson when he returns to the carcass of the lion he has slain and finds the honey that the bees have deposited in it: not simply any reward, but the moral sweetness of fortitude.

To be precise, it is not the foul-breathed dragon that does the seducing, but the lady who rides him, to whom the most immediate association, given that the dragon is "Babylonish," is of course the "whore of Babylon," the seducing enchantress in league with the Devil. According to Jung (Mysterium, p. 302, para. 415):

The whore (meretrix) is a well-known figure in alchemy. She characterizes the arcane substance in the initial "chaotic" state.

He proceeds to give numerous examples. One of them, the 1618 Tripus Araeus (Golden Tripod) of Michael Maier, has the lady riding a lion instead of a dragon (image from Wikipedia Commons). It is Maier's illustration for the 11th key of Basil Valentine, a lady riding a lion against her masculine counterpart, where her lion has its jaws around the muzzle of the man's lion, a kind of bizarre copulation (the "erotic aspect") with the vagina dentata in charge. As indicated by the small lions on the lower far right, the operation is that of the multiplicatio (Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game, p. 126).

Robert Place was inspired to put the left side of this image, minus the physical contact between the two lions, on the Strength card of his "alchemical tarot" (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/169096160983860414/). He says (The Alchemical Tarot, p. 175):

The alchemical process represented by Strength is fermentation. This is part of the process at which ferment is incorporated with the matter to exalt it. . . . The lion represents our untamed animal nature, our libido. In this illustration it is depicted as the green lion, which the Rosarium Philosophorum tells us is Mercury the deadly poison that will be transmuted into the healing elixir. The virgin represents the Higher Self, who tames the lower animal nature through love.

If she has tamed him, however, then he is no longer "deadly poison" of the green lion, but "healing elixir." Is he still green? The problem is that in some texts speak of a "red lion," and some illustrations color Place's lion, the one with a lady holding a heart, red (https://www.alamy.com/alchemy-twelve-keys-red-and-green-lions-muliplication-the-eleventh-key-of-basil-valentine-from-practica-cum-duodecim-clavibus-in-the-tripus-aureus-of-michael-maier-1618-the-curious-engraving-depicts-a-process-unique-to-the-later-stages-of-the-alchemical-process-called-multiplication-the-newly-made-philosophers-stone-the-lapis-multiplies-itself-this-it-can-do-a-thousand-fold-by-absorbing-into-itself-mercury-during-this-process-the-stone-is-dissolved-only-to-reconstitute-itself-anew-multiplied-this-stage-is-called-the-nourishing-of-the-red-lion-by-the-blood-of-the-gree-image179624126.html). In fact in the image just linked to both lions are red. Yet the explanatory note says that only the one doing the devouring is red.

Here it is worth seeing what more Jung has to say. First, the dragon and the lion are not quite equivalent. Of the lion Jung says (Mysterium, p. 295, para. 404):

He is the warm-blooded form of the devouring, pradatory monster who first appears as the dragon. Usually the lion-form succeeds the dragon's death and eventual dismemberment. This in turn is followed by the eagle.

This gives the lion an intermediary nature, between the cold-bloded dragon and the soaring eagle.

Then there is the issue of the two lions. Jung comments, about not the lions of the 11th key (Ibid.) but rather another pair, those of Johann Daniel Mylius's Philosophia Reformata, 1622, 23rd emblem. Jung says:

The two lions are sometimes identified with the red and white sulphur. [Footnote: Mylius, Phil. Ref., p. 190.] The illustrations show a furious battle between the wingless lion (red sulphur) and the winged lioness (white sulphur). The two lions are prefigurations of the royal pair, hence they wear crowns. Evidently at this stage there is a good deal of bickering between them, and this is precisely what the fiery lion is intended to express--the passionate emotionality that precedes the recognition of the unconscious contents. . . . It is however, psychologically correct to say that this emotion unites as much as it divides.

Since one lion is winged, the struggle may be the volatile vs. the fixed. The one with wings is clearly a lioness. In general, alchemical progress is by the fixed becoming volatile and vice versa. Curiously, here they are two forms of sulphur, whereas in the other context, the Green Lion was Mercury. In any event, (Ibid, p. 298, para. 408):

They [the lions] come in the category of those theriomorphic pairs who spend their time fighting and copulating, e.g. the cock and the hen, the two serpents of the caduceus, the two dragons, etc.

However, there are not two lions, either fighting or copulating, on the card. This is not Taming of the Shrew, but King Lear, whose protagonist goes from roaring emotionality, first against his youngest daughter and then against his older ones, to temporary insanity to gentleness. There is also the "erotic aspect," which Lear unconsciously feels for his daughters, first as possessions and then as seducers or, in the case of his youngest, innocent victim. This aspect for Jung is developed in the "lion hunt" of Marchos, a legendary king of Egypt according to Arabic texts. Jung summarizes what he understands of it from alchemical texts (Ibid., pp. 298-9, para. 409):

Marchos prepares a trap and the lion, attracted by the sweet smell of a stone that is obviously an eye-charm (footnote: "The stone which he who knows places on his eyes"), falls into it, and is swallowed by the magic stone. "And this stone, which the lion loves, is a woman." The trap was covered by a "glass roof," and the interior, called by Senior the "cucubita," is here called the "thalamus" (bridal chamber), where the magic stone that is "good for the eyes" and is a woman, lies on a bed of coals. The stone swallows (transglutit) the lion so that nothing more of him was to be seen.

This of course precisely parallels the unicorn hunt described by St. Isadore (see above), where the unicorn that puts its head in the lap of a virgin is an allegory for Christ. In this case, however, the lion is not just captured but entirely swallowed by the feminine stone. The "bed of coals" refers to the application of heat, probably in the operation of multiplicatio, in which the Philosopher's Stone is used to generate as much gold or elixer as desired from base material.

In another work, a poem attributed to the legendary Basil Valentine, ostensibly 15th century but more likely 16th century, it appears that the woman/stone is in fact his daughter, whose sexual response is hinted at in the image of the fountain that springs from it (Ibid., p. 303, para. 415):

A stone there is, and yet no stone.
In it doth Nature work alone.
From it there welleth forth a fount
in which her Sire, the Fixed, is drown'd;
His body and life absorbed therein
Until the soul's restored again.

The fountain suggests the "wet way" (as opposed to the "dry way" of heat), in which the multiplicatio proceeds by way of dissolution in a chemical solution.

The son is also the father, and the daughter also the mother, a direct parallel to St. Bernard's prayer to the Virgin in Canto 33 of Dante's Paradiso:

"Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio."

"O Virgin Mother, Daughter of thy Son,
Lowliest and loftiest of created stature,
Fixed goal to which the eternal counsels run."

The Virgin's place on the family tree is rather complex, given that at the Assumption she also becomes Christ's bride.

Jung's comments here are in the context of the Cantelina of George Ripley, alchemical writer and canon of the Church. In this alchemical poem, an old king, referred to once as "Ancient of Days" (Jung, Mysterium, p. 279, para. 374)) finds that he is without issue (Ibid., p. 276, para. 370; I am modernizing the spelling for the benefit of any reader whose native language is not English),

Though I was born without corruption
And nourished 'neath the Pinions of the Sun.

Jung sees in "pinions of the sun" a reference to Malachi 4:2, "The sun of justice shall rise with healing on its wings," and also a remark by Senior (the Arabic alchemist also known as Geber) that "the male without wings is under the winged female". Therefore pinions of the sun  = wings of a nourishing mother. It is also reminiscent of the winged lioness with the wingless male lion.

 The queen becomes pregnant with her husband/mother, who somehow gets into her womb--not swallowed this time, because he first gets under her skirt (pp. 283-284). Once there, however, he is reduced to the prima materia, that is, matter in its formless state. We might pause to consider, what is that psychologically? It is not that of descending into something evil, but rather to the condition of the "tohu bohu" of Genesis 1:2: "And the earth was without form [Hebrew, tohu] and void [Hebrew, bohu] (http://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1-2.htm), in other words, going back to the beginning and being created anew.

The pregnant queen now withdraws to her bedchamber, where (verses 17-18, Ibid, pp. 285, para. 387, and p. 311, para. 429):

Meanwhile she of the Peacock's Flesh did Fare
And Drank the Green-Lion's Blood with that fine Meat,
Which Mercury, bearing the Dart of Passion,
Brought in a Cup of Babylon.

Thus great with Child nine months she languished
And Bathed her with the Tears which she had shed,
For his sweet sake, who from her should be Plucked
Full-gorged with Milk which now the Green-Lion sucked.

We need not stop to examine the meaning of "Peacock's Flesh," except to say that it is the animal associated with Juno, queen of the gods. But notice again the refernce to Babylon: it is usually "dragon's blood" that has magic properties.What we are mainly interested in is the Green Lion, whose blood nourishes the queen during her pregnancy. Jung says (p. 311, para. 429, my emphasis):

The uroboric relationship between queen and lion is quite evident here: she drinks his blood while he sucks her milk. This singular notion is explained by what we would consider an offensive identification of the queen with the mother of God, who, personifying humanity, takes God into her lap and suckles him at her breast. The lion, as an allegory of Christ, returns the gift by giving humanity his blood. This interpretation is confirmed in the later verses.

In verse 28 "the ruddy Son doth spring/ To grasp the Joyful Sceptre of a King," and in verse 29, God raises him to Heaven and crowns him in glory, equal with the Sun (p. 317, paras. 440 and 442). In verses 32-35 the queen is similarly elevated, still drinking the blood that gushes from the Green Lion's side (another reference to Christ), while he drinks her milk. So it seems that the Green Lion is the lion in its purified form here, even if elsewhere he is unpurified.

The alchemists expressed the relationship between person and lion in different ways. In one image, the lion is on a leash and small in relation to the person (the alchemist?), at left below (Johann Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622). In another, Michael Maier's Viatorum of 1618, with Androcles and his lion, the lion is as big as the man, and the leash is quite loose, at right. (Both images are reproduced in Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game, Alchemical Illustrations of the Seventeenth Century, 1988, pp. 176 and 131.)

 

 

Sallie Nichols in Jung and Tarot (York Beach, ME; Weiser, 1980) reframes Jung's approach to the image without recourse to alchemy.

To begin with, for her. the card exemplifies the dramatic change from one opposite to another which she saw in the Wheel card, from yang to yin. Card number 11, with its wide-brimmed hat resembling the infinity sign, is reminiscent of card number 1, the Magician. As the numbers start again, we have a female magician with feminine ways, who enchants by gentleness and grace rather than creating practiced illusions by means of a distracting wand and quick hands. She is also a manifestation of the anima (Ibid, pp. 201-202):

We might view this woman as the anima, an archetypal personage symbolizing the hero's unconscious, feminine side. In card number one, the Magician initiated our Tarot series. Here now in card ten plus one, we are ready for a new beginning and a new magic - one in which this lady magician will play an initiatory role. It is she who will act as mediator between the hero's ego and the more primitive powers of his psyche.

This mediating role between the ego and the psyche as a whole, the Self, is of course a defining feature of the anima, which most Jungians today accept as valid in its sphere of "Eros" for both men and women. To help us recognize her, Nichols reprints a photo of the lady. It is Diana, photographed not with doves but, as is more usual for her, "walking her dog" (Ibid, p. 211) at night in the Tuileries Gardens (named, of course, for the palace that used to be there).

Nichols' word "initiatory" is appropriate here. After the Wheel, we are in a space where we realize that are not in charge of ourselves (Ibid, p. 204):

Anyone who has been "beside himself" with rage, "consumed" by jealousy. or "possessed" by lust can never again imagine that he is wholly above the beasts.

For Nichols, as for Place, and for With before either of them, the point is not to repress the instincts but to tame them. Repression, even of rage, results in illness, physical or mental, Nichols says. She has a persuasive argument against assimilating the card to Samson (Ibid, p. 206; her figure 48 is below right, cropped from an enamel plaque by Nicholas of Verdun, 1181, one of 45 such plaques in the museum of the Chorherrenstift, Klosterneuburg, Austria; the letters SAMSOCVLEONE - presumably Samson with Lion - appear beneath it; next to it I have put the 1761 Conver card in a modern reproduction by Heron):

Woman's way of relating to the beast is very different from the masculine approach, as evidenced by contrasting Samson and the Lion with Strength (Fig. 48). Samson opposes his beast directly, face to face, in an aggressive, masculine way; the woman in our Tarot approaches her lion gently and calmly, indirectly, from the lion's hidden, unconscious side. He must withstand the onslaught of bestial rage or he will be devoured. In contrast, the lion appears to lean against the lady. Her foot and flowing robes suggest motion, the possibility of a give-and-take adjustment to whatever situation arises. Interestingly enough, Samson's hands and the hands of the lady are similarly placed at the lion's paws, but his hands seem to challenge the beast, hers to soothe it.

Although there are plenty of depictions of Samson behind the lion as opposed to "face to face," the general point remains. As a result, the lion need not be killed; it offers its "sweetness" - the honey that Samson later found in the carcass of the dead lion - freely.

The problem today is not only that of "taming the lion" (Ibid., pp. 209-210):

As the old myths have indicated, primitive man had great difficulty in controlling his instincts for they were close to the surface and he could not easily deny them. 'today we have ignored our instinctual side so long that we are likely to forget that it exists until it bursts from its cage with the fury of an angry lion. Yet, like it or not, as our Tarot Strength suggests, we must find a way to walk beside it in peaceful companionship.

Part of the process is to recognize the fear that derives from woundedness and suppression. Nichols quotes Aniela Jaffe in C. G. Jung et al, Man and his Symbols, p. 239, in archive.org (Ibid, p. 211):

Suppressed and wounded instincts are the dangers threatening civilized man; uninhibited drives are the dangers threatening primitive man. In both cases the "animal" is alienated from its true nature, and for both, the acceptance of the animal soul is the condition for wholeness and a fully lived life. Primitive man must tame the animal in himself and make it his helpful companion; civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his friend.

I was interested in knowing what Jaffe considered the source of this wounding. She says, in a passage leading up to Nichols' quote from her (Ibid.):

Man is the only creature with the power to cotrol instinct by his own will, but he is also able to suppress, distort, and wound it - and an animal, to speak metaphorically, is never so wild and dangerous as when it is wounded. Suppressed instincts can gain control of a man; they can evn destroy him.

There are also, it seems to me, the wounds unwisely given to us by others, especially early in life, Healing such wounds are easier said than done. How is Oedipus to heal his wounded ankles? Perhaps it is enough to make the connection between his wound and his later aggression. Jaffe says (Ibid.):

The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from consciousness and out to be (or is trying to be) integrated into life.

Thus one way to contact the "animal within" and soothe its feelings through recognizing it is by means of dreams. Nichols finds a visual equivalent in a late 19th century French painting (p. 213):

Maybe our lost and wounded animal souls come to us in our dreams seeking animal help. In Rousseau's painting The Sleeping Gypsy (Fig. 52 [at right]), a lion pauses beneath a desert moon at the edge of a sleeping gypsy's dream. Under the spell of the moonlight, lion and gypsy are each bewitched by the spell of the other. The gypsy's sleep is haunted by dreams of his lost animal soul: the restless beast sniffs out the mystery of humanity, yearning for its touch. 

Nichols does not define "animal soul," but it seems to be that in our unconscious that corresponds to our problematic instinctual side, envisioned as an animal. She gives other examples in Greek mythology: the swan that Zeus turned into to seduce Leda, the bull he turned into for Europa, and Actaeon's dogs, put under Diana's control. Jung expresses a corresponding idea, that of the participation mystique that Levy-Bruhl very rightly stressed as characteristic of the primitive mentality" (Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. 488). Primitive man, Jung says, projects something in his unconscious onto a wild animal. However, "all projections are unconscious identifications with the object" (Ibid).

Such identification remains even today, even if modern hunters and lovers usually aren't aware of it. It operates also in religion. The "lion of Judah," applied to Christ, was originally Samson, who avanged himself against the Philistines in the land of Judah (Judges 15:10-15). His fighting the lion is then one lion against another, killing it is mastering that leonine power, and eating of its flesh or the honey in its carcass is the act of absorbing its divine power. That power in Christianity then transfers to Christ, called "lion of the land of Judah" in Rev. 5:5, whose flesh, the "word of God" (1 John 2:14) that lives in the believer, is eaten in the Eucharist. But how did what was formerly the Devil, Samson's lion, become Christ, the divine energy of forgiveness? Or is it really the Devil who forgives, that one may, despite one's good intentions, sin again and be absolved again? The magic is all done with mirrors!

Nichols concludes (p. 213):

Fortunately the hero in our story remembers his dreams and is aware of the lion that prowls around in the night. Apparently he has also made contact with the anima who walks beside this animal. With this powerful lady as guide, the hero may safely explore the inner forests of his psyche. With her help, he may come to know the lion and all the other primitive beasts who inhabit the darkest recesses of his being.

The lady is not only powerful, but in making friends with the lion she does display the virtue of fortitude. The lion is not just her power, but also her fear. She has made friends with that fear as well as curbing it, in the sense of making it manageable and a force for good. In that way both figures are models of the ego practicng the virtue, as opposed to mediator and instinct. In the world today enduring one another's presence is a major problem, requiring considerable fortitude to avoid trying to wipe one another out. The lion and the lady have both mastered that virtue. It is not too late to learn from them. 

7. Conclusion

This card, like those before it, has undergone much metamorphsis. Defined as "fortitude," the moral virtue, its illustrtions show the other type of fortitude, phyical strength, as its symbolic equivalent. It is one of suppression, killing, or making friends with it, not so much as power but as fear, in particular the fear of death, which Aquinas put as the chief obstacle to fortitude. Managing the lion is to overcome one's own fear of it. Alleviating its fear, by treating it with demonstrable respect, is to alleviate one's own.

Jung's account of the lion accords with that of his fellow countryman Wirth. However, Wirth does not say how feminine gentleness tames the lion, who in general is not moved by gentleness in other animals, such as lambs. In that respect Case and Jung go further, and precisely by appealing to the lion of alchemy, green and red. But there is an important difference, or at least difference in emphasis. For Case it is a matter of control. By controling one's subconscious, rigorously training it with suggestions over a long period, one controls the physical world of one's body and outside it. Jung 's method, like the alchemists, is more that of biology: by combining opposites, male and female, each is dissolved, and a new being grows. It is the opposite of control: it is a letting go of control, experiencing the chaos (in a safe place, the analyst's office), and through active imagination and reflection developing a new perspective. Perhaps the new perspective that emerges is itself a result of suggestions to the unconscious and vice versa. The figure-eight wreath in Case's card could be interpreted as such a mutual process. Still, Jung's seems a more collaborative process than what Case describes.