Strength: Boundaries & Protection
image: a black person in athletic wear in front of a grainy purple, green, and red psychedelic background.
Though I've always dated a wide variety of Black folks, I admit that in my 20s I had a type.
It wasn't a physical type; I find that rather boring. But there were stark similarities. All these men were, I'm almost ashamed to say, bad boys. Stereotypically so.
They were prone to masculine violence, though never towards me. The "never towards me" aspect is what drew me to them. When they were with me, they were gentle, even mild.
The nicks and scars on their hands, one even missing a fingertip, told a different story about their relationship to the rest of the world.
I was looking for a protecter, and I found them. Yet bad boys are not as simple as they say they are.
Eventually they must grow, or you must. They must put limits on the way they use the power of protection, of you and themselves. Or, often, you'll need to limit their access to you, and you to them.
That mandate is of the essence of tarot's Strength card. Strength asks us to start wrestling our vices, setting some boundaries, and protecting our interests.
Strength wants us to take responsibility for the cycles that keep us non-consensually bound. Strength wants us to notice when we're acting impulsively, doing to much, or doing it again.
Strength asks us to acknowledge the sometimes disparate parts that make us whole, and who we are.
Growing up as a working class Black autistic means being misunderstood. In my community of origin, the way I spoke made me an outsider, and a put me on a pedestal. In a tight-knit, churchgoing community, I was noticeably antisocial.
I was also a black sheep. I was often suspended, provided uneven academic results, and a runaway.
When I got a full ride scholarship anyway, I figure that college would morph me into the middle-class femme people presumed I was.
College doesn't do that, unfortunately. While my college friends were selling ice cream, I was selling ass. I didn't have enough familial support to survive off work study jobs or internships.
Besides that, my family of origin was violent, deep in addiction, and dangerous.
I made the decision to excel all the same, but this put me in a complex position.
I loved my new friends, but I didn't enjoy the same advantages they did. They loved me too, but I often felt judged for what I did to survive. As a sex working femme, educated masculinities often sexualized or exoticized me.
I'm ashamed to say they still do, though I retired a few years back. If you only see me online, I assure you I look and seem very different in person.
I'm a shapeshifter. The story I'm about to tell you about is about how I learned that, and how accepting it is a form of protection.
The community I found at college were the people I could share what I was reading, my musical interests, and my political beliefs.
I knew though that that wasn't all of me.
That's where the bad boys came in. The bad boy understands that life is hard. He doesn't judge. He expects not to be judged.
He leads with strength, and doesn't hesitate when it's time to protect. The question when he's around isn't who will protect your body, its whether he has enough emotional intellegence to protect your heart. Or if you do.
Deciding how close to get to a bad boy is a question that reflect the central intentions of tarot's Strength card.
Strength is one of the cards my students in Tarot in Community most often say they don't totally understand.
This mystery is baked into the card. After all, how can we understand the impulses of an animal, as symbolized by the lion? Even more, how can we grasp the knowledge of a divine being like the angel?
Strength is about the parts of ourselves we may never fully understand, but for which we are still responsible. It rules our instincts, our highest wisdom, and the actions we must take to harmonize them.
The first bad boy I fell in love with was in the process of reforming herself. She was ten years my senior and amazing in every room of the house. I was drunk all the time when I was with her, and very high, so we had a lovely time.
She gave me enough money to quit dancing for a while, but it meant I was dependent on her largesse. That's never been something I could tolerate.
And also, the other side of that bad boy was a crazy girl. A manic (well, in my case, undiagnosed and mysteriously lethargic) pixie dream girl. She was sure my physical illness was the product of overwork. (It was lupus.) Because I was dependent, I became obsessed.
Strength doesn't generally cause these confusions, but it can bring them to the light. The obsession, the addiction, the dependance.
Unlike The Devil, Strength often brings up these issues when you are in the best position to reverse them.
Strength didn't come up for me in that relationship. It was, from the first time I pulled on it, The Lovers and The Devil.
But it was the kind of relationship that I had to excavate during my second bad boy. He was charming and generous and emotional like any water sign man.
Also an alcoholic, with a penchant for drinking then hitting the road in his beautiful, immaculately kept car. I was with him only partially and too long.
When the inevitable split between us occurred, after two and a half years that felt like the quarter of a decade that they were, Strength finally visited me.
It was time to clean up my act. My act had changed. From 20, when I met my first bad boy, to 30, when I split with my last, my life had changed beyond recognition. My gender had changed, my finances and even my hair were different.
How could I go on looking for understanding in the life I'd outgrown?
Strength, like Temperance, is a reformer.
The difference is that Strength asks us to apply what we've learned about ourselves from our adventures and growth. It asks us to be smarter about forming our identities.
Unlike Temperance, it doesn't ask for total integration, simple acknowledgement can be enough.
When I was studying with Empress Karen Rose, she said something about boundaries < protection that I can't do justice here. I can't do it justice because I'm always still thinking about it, weighing in on how I feel.
Boundaries as a framework were taught to me as a way to avoid emotional harm. Whether manipulation, extraction, or just bad behavior. As a way of governing what I will and won't accept.
I find that framework somewhat helpful, though I don't always find it totally possible to prevent emotional harm. I haven't seen boundaries reliably do this in my life, nor has anyone ever told me it's doing that for them.
Boundary discourse mostly works for dealing with other heavily therapized, boundaried people. That doesn't mean they don't work, or any totalizing conclusion like that.
It means, to me, that like all things that exist in real life they have equally real limits.
That, to me, is where protection comes in.
What I worry about, whether it's when a bad boy becomes a scary guy, or a friend turns out to be an entitle asshole, is defense, walls, limits people genuinely can't pass.
This is also something I was invited to think about my relationship to as one of Empress Karen Rose's students. The difference between a shield and a wall is a big one. Personally, I need both, and Strength offers both.
Strength asks us to build healthy boundaries, tell people how we feel, and stick to our guns. It also don't mind cutting somebody off, or just cutting them.
I live within both those modes, and I'm lucky to have people who can shift between them with me. By embracing Strength in my 30s, I'm more willing to talk it out, share my thoughts, and dialog--to a point.
Gentler isn't always better. The angel isn't always the right path. That's what the lion there for.
Further Thoughts
image: hey, i'm cyree jarelle. I run Collective Cartomancy. I help queers, feminists, and leftists connect with their intuition using tarot and cartomancy. More on me.