The series
Part I – Temperance: The Inner Alchemist
Part II – The Hermit: The Lantern-Bearer
Part III – Strength: The Gentle Power Within
Meeting the Lion
After Temperance synthesizes your contradictions and the Hermit lights your path down the mountain, you meet strength as the lion.
Always, you meet the lion.
The lion is everything that can’t be controlled through intellect alone. It’s your raw life force: your instincts, your desires, your anger, your hunger, your power in its most primal form. It’s the part of you that doesn’t give a damn about your carefully constructed spiritual identity. The part that wants what it wants. The part that roars when threatened, regardless of whether that’s “appropriate.”
But the lion isn’t just internal. It’s also the world’s response to your emergence. When you descend the mountain and start living your truth aloud, you meet wild energies you can’t predict or manage. Some people will celebrate you. Others will misunderstand you. Some will project their own unmet needs onto your work. Others will challenge you, test you, or try to fit you into boxes you’ve deliberately outgrown.
The marketplace is feral. Human relationship is untamed. Even your own nervous system (after years of conditioning and protection) will sometimes respond to vulnerability with full-body panic.
This is the lion. And the temptation, when you meet it, is overwhelming: control it.
Cage it. Train it. Dominate it through force of will. Build systems and strategies and protective armour so thick that nothing wild can touch you. Perform such perfect composure that no one sees your raw edges. Manage your image so carefully that you never have to risk being truly seen.
This is what most “success” training teaches. This is what most spiritual bypassing looks like at the advanced stages. Control the narrative. Master your emotions. Project unwavering confidence. Be the lion tamer, whip in hand, chair held defensively, making the beast jump through hoops to prove your authority.
The card of Strength shows us something radically different.
The Lesson of the Woman in White
Look at her. She wears white, the color of beginners, of innocence, of those who haven’t yet learned to hide their light or their vulnerability. She isn’t standing at a safe distance with a weapon. She’s right there, hands on the lion, close enough to feel its breath, its heat, its capacity for violence.
And she isn’t fighting it.
One hand rests gently on the lion’s muzzle. The other reaches toward its mane with something that looks less like dominance and more like… affection? Intimacy? Her posture is relaxed. Her face is serene. There’s no tension in her body, no bracing for attack.
She isn’t controlling the lion. She’s communing with it.
This is the teaching that Western culture consistently misses: true strength isn’t the ability to suppress or dominate the wild. True strength is the ability to be with the wild (in yourself and others) without needing it to be anything other than what it is.
The woman doesn’t make the lion smaller. She doesn’t tame it into compliance. She touches it with such complete presence, such radical acceptance, that the lion’s aggression transforms into something else entirely. Not submission. Not defeat. But trust.
This is what presence does. It doesn’t force. It doesn’t manipulate. It doesn’t perform dominance. It simply is—so fully, so authentically, so undefended—that aggression has nothing to push against. Violence needs resistance to justify itself. When it meets pure acceptance, it often dissolves into something softer.
Notice the infinity symbol floating above her head. This is the lemniscate, the figure-eight of eternal flow, of cycles, of continuous becoming. It tells us that this isn’t a one-time achievement. You don’t “master” the lion once and retire as champion. You meet it again and again, in different forms, across different contexts, throughout your entire life.
The strength required isn’t the strength of conquest. It’s the strength of infinite patience with your own unfolding. With the lion’s moods. With the world’s chaos. With your own oscillation between presence and protection.
This is the gentleness that doesn’t break under pressure. The softness that’s stronger than stone because it can flex without fracturing. The vulnerability that paradoxically becomes invincible because it has nothing to defend.
Embodiment in Action
So what does this actually look like when you’re trying to live your magic in the visible world?
It looks like showing up to share your work without the armor of false confidence or performed expertise. It looks like saying “I don’t know” when you don’t know, instead of bluffing your way through. It looks like letting people see you in-process, unfinished, still figuring it out.
When I started offering narrative alchemy sessions, my first instinct was to build an impeccable professional facade. Website copy that sounded like I had all the answers. Marketing that positioned me as an authority. Language that hid any uncertainty or ongoing exploration behind polished expertise.
That’s the lion-taming approach. It’s what we’re taught: look strong, sound certain, never let them see you sweat.
But it felt like wearing a suit of armor to a dance. Technically protective, but fundamentally wrong for the occasion. So I tried something different. I started writing exactly what I was discovering, in real-time, without waiting for it to be perfect or proven or validated by external authority. I showed my experiments, my questions, my half-formed theories alongside my more solid insights.
And something unexpected happened: people responded more deeply to the unfinished work than they ever had to my polished presentations. Not because messiness is inherently superior, but because authenticity creates resonance. When you stop performing and start simply being, when you say here’s what I’m learning and here’s where I’m stuck and here’s what feels true from where I’m standing, you give others permission to be human too.
This is leading from presence instead of strategy. Strategy asks: “What will make me look credible?” Presence asks: “What’s true?” Strategy tries to control outcomes. Presence trusts the process. Strategy builds walls. Presence opens doors.
It looks like trusting your “lion”: your gut wisdom, your sovereign no, your body’s intelligence.
Your nervous system knows things your mind hasn’t caught up to yet. That subtle contraction in your chest when someone asks you to do something that’s not aligned? That’s your lion. That full-body yes when an opportunity appears that scares you but feels right? That’s your lion too.
For years, I overrode these signals in favor of what seemed “strategic” or “professional” or “appropriate.” I said yes to collaborations that drained me because they looked good on paper. I muted my more experimental thinking because it didn’t fit standard industry narratives. I performed versions of myself that were more palatable, more marketable, more easily understood.
Every time I did this, I weakened. Not because those choices were “wrong,” but because I was operating from control instead of communion. I was trying to cage my lion (my instincts, my desires, my particular frequency) to make it acceptable to an imagined audience.
The shift came when I started treating my gut responses as data instead of noise. When that sense of “this isn’t aligned” arose, instead of overriding it with rational arguments, I got curious. What is my lion trying to tell me? When that surge of excitement appeared, even if the path seemed impractical, I leaned in. What does this energy want to become?
This isn’t blind impulsivity. It’s somatic intelligence. It’s letting your whole system, not just your analyzing mind, inform your choices.
It looks like having the courage to be unfinished in public.
We live in a culture obsessed with arrival. With “crushing it” and “10X-ing” and demonstrating measurable success. The spiritual marketplace is no different, it’s full of people performing enlightenment, radiating unshakeable peace, claiming to have transcended all struggle.
Strength teaches something more honest: you can be powerful without being perfect. You can be a guide without being done growing. You can offer your gifts while still receiving gifts from others.
The courage to be unfinished isn’t carelessness. It’s integrity. It’s refusing to pretend you’re something you’re not. It’s trusting that your work-in-progress is valuable precisely because it’s real.
The Shadow Side of Strength
But here’s where most interpretations of Strength get dangerously incomplete: softness isn’t the same as spinelessness. Gentleness doesn’t mean becoming a doormat. Vulnerability doesn’t require you to tolerate violation.
The woman in the card is gentle with the lion, yes. But notice: she’s also close to it. She’s in contact. She hasn’t disappeared herself to accommodate its wildness. She maintains her presence, her integrity, her distinct selfhood even as she communes with something powerful and unpredictable.
This is the shadow work that Strength demands: learning that boundaries are not betrayals of softness but expressions of it.
Strength includes the word “No.”
The lion in you needs your no. It needs you to protect your sovereignty, your energy, your creative life force from being scattered across a thousand diffuse obligations. Your no creates the container in which your yes can be potent.
When someone asks me to do work that doesn’t align with my purpose, saying no isn’t rejection; it’s redirection. I’m preserving my capacity for the work that only I can do, the work that feeds rather than drains me. This isn’t selfishness. It’s stewardship.
Boundaries are an act of love, for you and the lion.
Think about what happens when you violate your own boundaries. You say yes when you mean no. You give when you’re depleted. You show up when you need rest. What follows isn’t generous presence; it’s resentment. Exhaustion. Half-hearted engagement that serves no one.
The lion in you becomes sick when you consistently override its needs in favor of external demands. And the lions in others (the people you’re trying to serve) sense the inauthenticity. They feel your depletion even if you smile through it. Your martyrdom doesn’t inspire; it teaches them to abandon themselves too.
Clear boundaries create the conditions for genuine connection. When you know your limits and communicate them clearly, you can be fully present within those limits. When you say yes, it’s a real yes (backed by energy, enthusiasm, integrity. When you say no, it’s clean) not laden with guilt or performed reluctance.
Sometimes strength means being both gentle AND firm.
The most advanced expression of Strength is knowing when to soften and when to set limits—often in the same interaction.
You can hold space for someone’s pain without taking responsibility for fixing it. You can be compassionate toward someone’s struggle without enabling their avoidance. You can love someone deeply while refusing to participate in their self-destruction.
This is the dance. Soft with the person, firm with the pattern. Gentle with the humanness, clear about the boundary. Present with what is, unwavering about what you will and won’t accept.
Strength looked like this: staying in compassionate contact while being absolutely clear about structure. “I care about what you’re going through, and I need you to honor our session times rather than reaching out in crisis mode. Let’s build a container that serves your growth instead of reinforcing emergency patterns.”
Gentle with the wounded child. Firm with the manipulation. Both/and, not either/or.
Embodiment Cue (Expanded)
The Heart Pulse Practice:
Stop reading. Place your hand over your heart. Not lightly, actually make contact with enough pressure that you can feel your heartbeat. If you can’t feel it immediately, breathe deeply until you can.
That steady rhythm beneath your palm? That’s your lion. That’s the life force moving through you without asking your permission, without waiting for your readiness, without concern for your strategies or plans.
This pulse existed before you became whoever you’re trying to be. It will exist after all your identities dissolve. It’s the wild in you that can’t be tamed, only tended.
For the next minute, do nothing but feel it. Don’t analyze. Don’t interpret. Just feel that ancient, animal rhythm.
Now ask: What does this heartbeat want me to know?
Listen with your body, not your mind. The answer might come as sensation, image, or simple knowing. Whatever arrives, honor it. This is your lion speaking. This is the wisdom your cognitive mind can’t access.
The Walking Meditation:
Sometime today or tomorrow, walk through your space (your home, your office, your neighborhood) not to get anywhere, but to move to your heart’s rhythm. Feel your pulse and let it set your pace. Not racing. Not sluggish. Whatever speed your actual heartbeat suggests.
As you walk, notice:
- Where do you speed up? Where are you rushing ahead of your own rhythm?
- Where do you contract? Where do you make yourself smaller?
- Where do you hold your breath? Where are you bracing against something?
- Where do you try to control? Where are you managing instead of allowing?
Each time you notice one of these patterns, pause. Hand on heart. Feel the pulse. Return to that steady, wild rhythm. Then continue.
This isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about developing intimacy with your lion, how it moves when it’s trusted, how it responds when it’s threatened, what it needs to feel safe enough to be powerful.
The Daily Presence Check:
At the end of each day this week, write three sentences:
- Today, I showed up without armor when I…
- Today, I set a boundary by…
- Today, my lion wanted…
This practice does two things. First, it trains your awareness to notice when you’re in Strength energy versus when you’re performing or protecting. Second, it builds evidence that you can be both soft and sovereign, both vulnerable and boundaried, both gentle and powerful.
Over time, these aren’t three separate capacities. They become one integrated way of being. You stop having to choose between protection and presence. You discover you can be completely open and completely clear about your limits. You embody the paradox: soft as water, strong as stone.
The woman in white isn’t transcendent because she’s conquered the lion. She’s transcendent because she’s no longer fighting it. She’s found the stillpoint where power and presence become indistinguishable. Where vulnerability is the armor. Where gentleness becomes unshakeable.
You have this capacity. Not as potential. As birthright.
You don’t have to tame your wildness to be trustworthy. You don’t have to perform strength to be powerful. You don’t have to hide your softness to be safe.
You just have to show up (undefended and boundaried, open and sovereign, gentle and immovable) and let your heartbeat be the only authority you answer to.
The lion doesn’t need a master.
It needs a companion.
Be that.
The series
Part I – Temperance: The Inner Alchemist
Part II – The Hermit: The Lantern-Bearer
Part III – Strength: The Gentle Power Within
