Strength:

Hercules, is, of course, our Strength card. And considering his luck, he really needed it.  One example out of many would be his less-than-ideal relationship with Hera, queen of the gods.  Hera hated him from day one because he was yet another of her husband Zeus’s bouncing baby bastards.  To punish him for the horrible crime of being born, she arranged for him to be bound in servitude to his cousin, King Eurystheus.  It was supposed to be demeaning and put Herc in his place, but the outcome wasn’t quite what she’d hoped. 

One would think that having a wicked strong half god around would be useful for all sorts of things, but mostly, it just made Eurystheus’ head hurt.  Herc was taller, stronger, better looking and far more brave than he was, and having him loitering around court only invited people to make comparisons.  So Eurystheus decided to send Hercules off on a seemingly impossible task to get the guy out of his hair.  The idea was that Herc would surely either A) get killed and never return or B) get disgusted and run off somewhere.  Either way, Eurystheus was off the hook with Hera and Hercules was no longer around to show him up.   

The problem was to find a task either hard enough or gross enough to do the trick.  Now, the Nemean lion had been munching on a lot of folks in the area and complaints had been reaching the king.  So, he thought, why not kill two birds with one stone and send Herc after the lion?  He did not think for one moment that Hercules would be dumb enough to actually attempt the task: the lion was huge, no weapon could pierce its hide and it had a definite attitude problem.  But even if Herc did a runner, Eurystheus could point out to the locals that, hey, if Hercules himself can’t get rid of this thing, what do you expect me to do?  It was the perfect plan, except for one small problem.  Unlike the king, Hercules wasn’t a coward.

Everyone loudly declared that it couldn’t be done, but Herc had a plan. He remembered how, when he was a baby, Hera had sent a couple of huge snakes into his crib to kill him—yeah, she could be a little bitchy—and he’d grabbed them around their necks and choked them to death.  He decided that what worked against a snake might work against a lion and went off to test his theory.

Long story short, the lion ended up dead, Herc became a hero and Zeus informed him that, should he successfully complete nine more tasks, he would bring him to Olympus and make him immortal.  Even better from Herc’s standpoint (because, let’s face it, an eternity hanging out with Hera was a mixed blessing) he made a new cape out of the lion’s skin that he had fun showing off at court. All because he didn’t just assume that the “impossible” task really was just that. The Strength card indicates a time in which the querent can, through energy, optimism and fortitude, overcome even the greatest of challenges.  Just don’t believe all the people telling you that it can’t be done and talk yourself out of a triumph.    

Strength Reversed

Hercules, seen on our Strength card, seemingly had it made. The son of Zeus and a human woman, he'd been promised immortality by his divine father if he successfully completed a series of tasks.  But there was a catch--the jobs became progressively harder and more disgusting as he went along.  That was mostly because Eurystheus, Herc's cousin and the king making up the tasks, was becoming desperate to get rid of him.  It had occurred to Eurystheus that letting Hercules finish his tasks and become a powerful god might not be too healthy for the guy who had put him through so much torture.  Especially when Hercules was already starting to show a certain animosity.  

Herc wasn't the sharpest tack on the corkboard, but even he'd noticed that most of the king’s well-born servants spent their days filling wine glasses or fanning beautiful women.  They didn’t get stuck cleaning up the Augean stables, which contained a huge herd of cattle and hadn’t been shovelled out in years.  Disgusting didn’t begin to cover it.  But Herc nonetheless figured out a way to do it during the generous amount of time--one day--that he’d been allotted.  He diverted a couple of rivers into the stables, which flushed them out nicely.  Only to discover that Eurystheus didn’t “count” that task, because Herc had gotten paid one-tenth of the cattle for his services.  It was enough to make anyone sore.

So by the time Hercules was sent on yet another ridiculous task, he was pretty much over it.  And that was before he found out that he was supposed to chase down a couple thousand birds.  And these weren’t just any old birds.  The Stymphalian birds were less feathered friends and more evil pets of Ares with sharp metal plumage that they liked to launch at people just to see them jump. And fall over. And die. They had settled around a lake in Arcadia and done absolutely nothing for the local property values.  Herc’s job was to get rid of them.

His answer to the challenge?  To sit on a nearby mountain and play solitaire or whatever demigods did to pass the time, because clearly, it wasn’t happening.  His bastard of a cousin had finally found a task that even Herc couldn’t do.  There were too many of the damn things and, anyway, every time he got near them, they just took cover in the heavy woods surrounding the lake.  And he couldn't kill what he couldn't even see. 

The Strength card reversed pretty much mirrors Herc’s attitude: it’s all about feelings of inadequacy, lethargy, pessimism, and the unwillingness or inability to act.  Why do something when, in the end, you’re doomed to fail anyway?  Why not just give up now and save yourself the trouble?  Because a pissed–off goddess is going to kick your butt, that’s why.  Or, at least, that was Herc’s reason for getting back up.  He got a visit from Athena (that's them in the card above) who had nursed him as a baby and outfitted him for his trials and generally been like a mother to him.  And she was Not Happy. Over a drink or five, she pointed out that winning immortality, or doing anything else worthwhile, was never designed to be easy, and yes, he might fail if he tried, but sitting on his butt playing a game that hadn’t even been invented yet sure as Hades wasn’t going to get anything done. 

She gave him a metaphorical kick in the pants, and knowing Athena, probably a literal one as well, and a huge set of cymbals that Hephaestus had made.  Herc used the cymbals to scare all the birds into the air, giving him an opportunity to pick them off.  Was it easy?  No—there were a couple thousand of them.  Herc’s arm practically fell off from pulling the bow and he was almost deafened by the cymbals.  But, in the end, he got most of them, and the rest decided to get the heck out of Greece. Likewise, there may be a solution to your problems as well, but you'll never find it if you don’t get off the sofa.