Ellis decK - Strength

A Youth is clad on a wolf´s skin and sitting on a lion. The tail of the lion is a big green serpent. There are snow topped mountains all around. The path forward is behind the lion so you have to be friends with it (or its master, the Strength) first before you can proceed. You learn that to proceed you will have to change your current armour into the soft warm pelt of the wolf. The Youth –Strength- is offering it for you in exchange of your hard and cold armour from your past travels.
There is snow and the sky is dark. The lion and the serpent are animals of lower and warmer latitudes and it is strange to see them up here in the snowy mountains. The Youth/Strength says he has tamed them although it has not been easy and the serpent-tail of the lion still wants to strike him. But they are his pets so they are following him wherever he goes, even to these high and cold mountains.


Some interpretations:
(from the companion book & from the picture)

* inner strength, personal power, charisma
* balance between gentleness and force
* tempering force with benevolence
* balance between spirit and body
* overcoming adversity
* stamina, energy
* conserving energy (the warm wolf pelt), resting
* steadfast friend


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Your body is made of the same elements that lionesses are built from. Three quarters of you is the same kind of water that beats rocks to rubble, wears stones away. Your DNA translates into the same twenty amino acids that wolf genes code for. When you look in the mirror and feel weak, remember, the air you breathe in fuels forest fires capable of destroying everything they touch. On the days you feel ugly, remember: diamonds are only carbon. You are so much more.
~Curtis Ballard

Wonderful, concise analysis, Hemera I haven't actually read the entire companion booklet myself, but I'll try to add what I can!

Particularly what catches my interest in the lion with a full-on serpentine tail! Besides possible esoteric correspondences (which I honestly don't use when reading with the Ellis; the bold colors and compositions do all the reading work for me all on its own)...

I really like the head-at-both-ends of the Animal symbolizing the surprise, multi-faceted aspects of what is characteristically thought to be the "simpler" aspect of oneself; the id. The id is easy to characterize as a straightforward urge or aspect of oneself, but actually wrestling with it becomes complex.

The lion part of the beast could be that traditional, straightforward, proud and animalistic side, and the snake could be that more underhanded, calculating, and misunderstood side.

I also like to look at the colors of a deck, which Ellis impresses me with I love the gold of the lion contrasting with the rich royal purple of the mountains on either side of the piece, with our Youth in the middle in grey tones. The greys in the middle suggest a muted, calm, and flexible balance found right at one's center--which happens to be just where the Youth is located within the composition.

( My first post in a study group thread yay!)

feynrir said:

( My first post in a study group thread yay!)

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Yess! Well you are certainly doing a great job!

I like what you say about the colors. They also impress me in this deck. They are vibrant and beautiful, sometimes unexpected but there is always harmony and logic in them, if that makes sense..

feynrir said:

The lion part of the beast could be that traditional, straightforward, proud and animalistic side, and the snake could be that more underhanded, calculating, and misunderstood side.

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Yes, you are right, there is so much more that could be written about the snake and the lion. The snake is certainly a very much misunderstood animal. It is an ancient Goddess symbol, an old symbol of Medicine and Pharmacy and of Kundalini, among other things.