Major Arcana · VIII

The Strength Year

Fire

A Strength year hands you your own intensity to hold. That's the work of it: staying steady in the hard conversation instead of going cold or going off, feeling the fear all the way through and doing the thing anyway. Your calm this year isn't compliance and your gentleness isn't weakness. The power on offer is quiet, the kind that meets its own anger and grief and desire with a hand on the jaw rather than a fist. You don't have to roar to get through this year. You have to stay.

What to do with a Strength yearWhen intensity rises this year, breathe through it instead of bracing, and name the feeling before it names you. Meet your hardest moments with some compassion, and let yourself be helped rather than proving you can hold it all alone.

Your twelve months

Each month steps one place forward through the cycle. The same twelve, in the same order, for any Strength year.

January
The HermitFebruary
Wheel of FortuneMarch
JusticeApril
The Hanged OneMay
DeathJune
TemperanceJuly
The DevilAugust
The TowerSeptember
The StarOctober
The MoonNovember
The SunDecember
Judgement

Element weather

How the twelve months balance across the elements.

5Fire months3Water months2Air months2Earth months

The rest of the cycle

The nine Majors a Strength year doesn’t touch.

The FoolThe MagicianThe High PriestessThe EmpressThe EmperorThe HierophantThe LoversThe ChariotThe World
The full year-ahead reading

The whole Strength year, woven

This page is the theme. The full reading walks all twelve months in the Almanac’s voice, reads the element weather, brings in how your Bearing meets the year, and closes with the skills and reflection questions a Strength year calls for.

See a sample reading →

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More on this card: Strength, the full meaning · Strength as a Bearing · all seventy-eight cards