Each year has a card based on numerology and the Major Arcana of the tarot. This year, the numerology associated with 2024 is 8 (2+0+2+4), which is the number of the card of the year. 

Note: In traditional tarot decks, VIII was “Justice” and XI was “Strength”. The Rider-Waite deck, which is used here at Sanctuary, switched the placement for a variety of astrological and divinatory reasons, and this order is used by many decks in the English-speaking world. It is what we use here, but the entangled relationship between these two cards persists even now. 

Strength

Keywords: Will power, persistence, working within limitations, endurance, transcendence, seeking perfection, patience, softness, receptivity, trust, compassion, mastery over one’s nature, unconventional approaches, the ties of friendship, higher goals, and values.

The world has many definitions of strength, but your abilities may not align with lifting weights or building walls. Hard things abound—we are asked to do difficult things every day, as to-do lists get longer and the news gets louder. You ask so much of yourself: to be better, to do more, to be more. Strength, we say, comes from this more. Lifting more, carrying more, doing more. 

But the universe is filled with many types of people and as many types of strength: the kind that waits more patiently than you can imagine, that kind that is still filled with compassion after pain, the kind that rises again in the morning after terrible storms. There are very few things more difficult than aligning our values and our hopes with the actions that we take each day as the world wears us down. It asks our strength to be hard; this card reminds us that we can be soft, and still endure. 

The archetype pictured on the card Strength does not face the lion with a spear or a sword. She cradles sharp teeth in gentle arms, mindful of the damage they can do. There is trust and patience in the image of this lion-tamer, a connection with the wilder parts of ourselves and the world around us that causes us to lash out. We’re often on the receiving end of other people’s pain, too. The daring and the strength we can show is in the willingness to be as vulnerable and unguarded as possible as we approach one another. There are few things more difficult than that.

This is a card that knows how to wait, quietly and gently, for the objects of its desire to come to it. You still have to do the work of being clear about what it is you want, putting out into the universe all that you want back. Patience is not the same as passively waiting for good things to come your way or ignoring the work through procrastination and fear. Putting in the work, day after day, enduring, with small moments of success and sustainable action, can lure in the dramatic desires you seek. Change doesn’t always look like instant gratification.

This year, when you set your goals, thinking about the world you want to create for yourself, think about what it means to intentionally engage with those desires in a constant, patient way. What does it look like to pick them up each month, each week, each day? How can you create the world you want to live in not just right now, but in every small choice you make? Chipping away at your goals might not feel as beautifully dramatic as a tower falling, as a rising sun, but it tames the lion just the same. Maybe even better, and it makes friends along the way.