The Major Arcana and the Hero’s Journey: Strength, Part I

I once met a man named Lion Serpent Sun. He lived in Victoria, BC and was a good friend’s Wiccan High Priest.

Len Olsen, a Pentecostal Preacher, appeared on a 1984 Victoria talk show called “100 Huntley Street” and claimed that Lion had attempted to sacrifice him and his wife in a Satanic ritual.

Big Mistake.

Lion sued Olsen and the talk show host all the way to the Supreme Court of British Columbia and won. “100 Huntley Street” wisely settled out of court.

Don’t ever mess with a man named Lion Serpent Sun.

The Lion, The Serpent, and The Sun are the three symbols of the Strength card.

Leo is the astrological sign attributed to Strength. Everyone knows that The Lion is charismatic, powerful, egotistical, and loves to be in control. Leo is ruled by the Sun, the center of our solar system and the source of all its energy. The planets move around it like dancers around a campfire on a chilly night.

Teth or Tet is the Hebrew letter attributed to Strength. It means serpent. The glyphs for Teth and Leo even look like snakes. Mythologies from all over the world equate the serpent with hidden, mysterious power.

kundalini Yoga works with the serpent energy that sleeps coiled three-and-a-half times around the sacrum at the back of our root chakra. When awakened, it rises through the body like liquid fire, energizing and bringing psychic awareness. When it moves out the crown chakra, it brings god-consciousness, or nirvana.

The serpents that twine up the caduceus symbolize this same energy.

The Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail represents the process of the first law of thermodynamics: The amount of energy in the universe remains the same, it can be neither created nor destroyed; but exists in a constant state of transformation. It describes the cyclic path of serpent power through the universe. Birth, Life, Death, and Rebirth.

The Theosophists call this serpent power Fohat, a Tibetan term meaning the ever-present electrical energy, the ceaseless destructive and formative power that drives the manifested universe. Fohat, in its various forms, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life. Theosophy, Vol 51, No 7, “Messenger of Divine Light”

Aleister Crowley was invoking Fohat during the air invocation in “Liber Samech: “O Sun IAF! O Lion-Serpent Sun, The Beast that whirlest forth, a thunder- bolt, begetter of Life!” And again at the end: “O Lion Serpent Sun Self! We are One, We are None: We are ALL! It is done.”

Dylan Thomas was talking about Fohat when he wrote:
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever……”

Other decks call the Strength card Force. I think this is a better name, because it says exactly what the card means: The Universal force (because The Lion symbolizes this world; The Serpent, the underworld; and The Sun, the heavens) that drives the previous card,The Chariot.

To be continued….