History & Symbolism
Why Strength and Justice swapped numbers between tarot traditions
Published September 25, 2026 · TarotCards24
Deal out a Tarot de Marseille deck in numerical order and you'll hit Justice at position VIII and Strength at position XI. Deal out a Rider-Waite-Smith deck the same way, and the two cards have traded places: Strength sits at VIII, Justice at XI. Same two cards, same meanings in broad strokes — different numbers. It's the only case in the entire 22-card Major Arcana where two cards genuinely swap positions between the two traditions, rather than just changing name or imagery.
This wasn't an accident or a printing error that stuck. Arthur Edward Waite made the swap deliberately, in 1909, to bring the deck's numbering in line with the astrological system used by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the secret society he belonged to. The Golden Dawn assigned zodiac signs to each Major Arcana card as part of its own internal correspondence table — Strength was linked to Leo, and Justice to Libra. The trouble was that the older Marseille numbering didn't line up with where those signs fall when you count the zodiac off against the card sequence starting from The Fool. Waite's fix was simple: swap the two cards' numbers so the astrology and the numerology finally agreed.
It's a small, almost technical decision with an outsized ripple effect. Anyone doing numerological readings across the full deck — treating card VIII as one kind of energy and card XI as another, consistently, across every reading — gets a genuinely different deck depending on which tradition they're using. A reader trained on Marseille numerology who picks up an RWS deck (or the reverse) will find Strength and Justice sitting exactly where the other tradition put the other card.
The meanings themselves didn't really change in the swap — Strength is still about composed, non-violent inner power (traditionally shown as a figure gently closing a lion's jaw), and Justice is still about balance, consequence, and clear-eyed judgment in both decks. What moved was purely structural: which number the card wears, and by extension, where it sits in any reading system built around the deck's numerical order.
Frequently asked
What numbers are Strength and Justice in Tarot de Marseille vs. RWS?
In Marseille, Justice is VIII (8) and Strength is XI (11). In Rider-Waite-Smith, they're swapped: Strength is VIII and Justice is XI.
Why did Waite make the swap?
To align the cards with the Golden Dawn's astrological attributions. The Golden Dawn assigns Leo to Strength and Libra to Justice. Counting the zodiac signs in order from Aries, Leo naturally falls in the 8th position and Libra in the 7th-to-11th range depending on the counting convention used — the numbering that matched was Strength=8, Justice=11, so Waite renumbered the cards to fit.
Is the Marseille order "more original"?
It's certainly older — the VIII/XI Marseille order predates the Golden Dawn by centuries. But "original" is complicated, since different historical tarot decks before Marseille don't always agree on this pair's order either.
Does the meaning of either card change because of the renumbering?
Not fundamentally — Strength is still about controlled inner power and Justice is still about balance and consequence in both systems. What changes is which number you associate with which theme, and how the card fits into numerological readings of the whole deck.
Do other decks follow RWS's swap or Marseille's original order?
It splits roughly along family lines. Most RWS-derived and Golden-Dawn-influenced modern decks follow Waite's VIII-Strength/XI-Justice order. Most decks in the historical Marseille lineage keep VIII-Justice/XI-Strength.