Mercury Retrograde in Leo + The Strength Card
Hold your Inner-Lion with Care
As Mercury Retrogrades through Leo, we’re invited to speak, listen, and reflect from the center of the heart, and from the gut. Mercury governs communication, thought, perception. Leo, ruled by the Sun, brings boldness, heat, drama, and the tender ferocity of the inner lion.
Together, they guide us into the territory of the Strength card in the Tarot, which is ruled by Leo. This card, often misunderstood as brute force or simple resilience, actually teaches us about compassionate power, embodied courage, and the holy act of taming our wild inner voices, not through control, but through intimacy.
A Trip to San Jacinto + the Rider–Waite–Smith Mountain
On Monday, my friend Mary Evans and I, and two other friends, took a drive from the High Desert down to San Jacinto Mountain, one of the most stunning high peaks in Southern California and a place of deep Cahuilla significance. Known in the Cahuilla language as Aya Kaich, which means “smooth cliffs”, a reference to the peak’s striking stone faces, this mountain is part of the creation stories of the people indigenous to this land. It is truly sacred.
This week, the valley floor in Palm Springs has been 105°, a scorching reminder of the raw, fiery intensity that lives within us, much like the roaring inner heat of the Strength card. Many people escape to the top of the mountain in the summer to experience cooler weather; it was probably in the 70s° up there when we watched the sun set over dinner.
We ascended giddy, like the four magical fairy queers that we are, via the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, the largest rotating aerial tram in the world. It carries you over Chino Canyon, from the arid heat of the desert floor into the pine-scented cool of the alpine. It felt like a pilgrimage into the backdrop of Strength card itself, whose Rider–Waite–Smith depiction features a mysterious mountain in the distance, suggesting inner work, sacred effort, and the long path to integration. It also makes me think of the Hermit card (9) that follows Strength (8).
In this way, the mountain offers us perspective and a soft, cooling breeze, much like the figure in the Strength card who, with their infinity halo, embodies a higher vantage point and gentle compassion. It teaches us that true strength doesn’t come from wrestling the heat alone, but from finding the fresh air at the summit, the quiet steadiness that soothes the lion within.
Mary Evans + the Apparition Tarot:
The Spirit of Strength
I’m so proud of Mary! She’s published multiple decks under her iconic Spirit Speak imprint, with her work recently featured in Cosmopolitan Italia and Taschen’s Tarot: Library of Esoterica. Her take on the Strength card in her Apparition Tarot is especially evocative.
The figures are radiant and commanding, yet soft and ritualistic, meeting the wild from within. In this card, we see four distinct figures, each a facet of inner strength:
• A Minoan Snake Goddess figure raises her arms in sovereignty and ecstatic power, reminding us of ancient feminine wisdom and the wild dance with our own serpent energy.
• A central, nude figure stands entwined with a red serpent, embodying the intimate embrace of our own primal instincts rather than their repression.
• Another winged being with a star above their head suggests higher consciousness and celestial protection, hinting that true strength is guided by spirit, not ego.
• Finally, a winged-figure cloaked under an almost cathedral-like archway bows their head in gentle devotion, revealing that strength also lives in vulnerability, prayer, and quiet inner sanctuary.
These images speak to the complexity of Strength as both a modern-day archetype and ancient remember: not just courage or loud confidence, but a layered tapestry of embodied ritual, cosmic connection, ancestral memory, and soft surrender.
Mary’s artwork reminds me how Mercury Retrograde in Leo may stir up loud inner voices or emotional intensity, but also how Strength teaches us not to fear the noise, only to learn how to sit with it, sing with it, soothe it, create with it.
*As a side-note, Mary is an incredible tarot practitioner and artists. She just gave me a life-changing tarot reading. I highly recommend her Gemini perspective!!
A ‘Shufflemancy’ Ritual on the Road Back
Driving back from Palm Springs into the High Desert dusk, Mary and I talked about what card we each feel we’re living through. When she said “Strength,” it felt like a mirror. I asked if we could do a little shufflemancy, a ritual I learned from my dear mentorship student and friend Lily of Planetary Dancer, where you hit shuffle on a playlist and let the song that arrives speak as a divination.
We tuned into a Strength playlist that I created (I have created a playlist for each Major Arcana in the tarot) and the song that arrived?
“This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush, who is a Leo. I often visualize Kate Bush as the woman on the Strength card. It helps that she has unforgettable photos of her in a onesie Lion suit.
Interpreting the Oracle:
“This Woman’s Work” as Strength Medicine
This song is heartbreakingly beautiful. A hymn to the invisible labor of love, the grief of feeling like you are not doing enough, and the courage it takes to hold space for another’s transformation. It whispers of the divine feminine quality of the Strength card, the feminine as infinitely bearing, fiercely witnessing, and quietly enduring.
“I know you have a little life in you yet,
I know you have a lot of strength left.”
These words speak to heartbreak and the tender, necessary process of releasing love. Mercury Retrograde in Leo may stir up deep intensity around matters of the heart, inviting us to find the bravery to let someone go, something go, aspects of ourself go, not out of indifference, but as an act of fierce, dramatic, over the top, but deeply compassionate Leo love. Let it be ritual. Let it be devotion.
Perhaps this evokes anger, frustration, longing; it is a burning process. Yet within this fiery passage, there is also a quiet invitation: How might you hold your own inner child’s hand as you walk barefoot across the hot coals of transformation?
“I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show.
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking…”
These lyrics echo Mercury in Leo’s intensity: swallowed emotions, thoughts louder than feelings, overthinking and over-analyzing.
But the true invitation for the Retrograde is to drop into the raw, realness of the Heart. Feel into your emotions. Breathe into your power. Like the Strength card, come back into the body as ritual. Feel it all. Listen to what was unsaid. Hold your inner-lion with care.
Mercury in Leo Dates
This Mercury in Leo transit is not a time to talk louder. It’s a time to listen to the roar within, and ask what it needs. It’s a time to honor the inner work that can’t be seen, but is deeply felt. If you find yourself crying in your car, go visit the mountain for a cooler vantage point. Channel a song that shatters you in the best way possible. Know that you are doing the work. And that work is holy.
Mercury entered Leo – Thursday, June 26
A spark ignites in the heart’s chamber, calling us to speak our truth with warmth and boldness.
Mercury Stations Retrograde – Thursday, July 17 (15º Leo)
A pause in the performance, an invitation to step behind the curtain and listen to what the inner lion truly needs.
Mercury Cazimi – Thursday, July 31 (9º Leo)
A moment of radiant clarity; the mind and heart merge in a golden embrace, illuminating our core intention.
Mercury Stations Direct – Monday, August 11 (4º Leo)
A steady breath returns, helping us move forward with renewed courage and more authentic self-expression.
Mercury clears shadow – Monday, August 25 (15º Leo)
The stage is set anew; lessons from the retrograde cycle integrate into a deeper, embodied knowing.
Mercury enters Virgo – Tuesday, September 2 (0º Virgo)
The roar softens into a discerning hum, words become tools for work, healing, precision, and service.
May this Mercury in Leo journey remind you that your voice is a vessel for soul-fire, your quiet moments are acts of bravery, and your heartbreaks are altars of transformation. Trust that with each pause, each tear, each roar you are growing, and that the lion within you knows the way home.
A Poem to Close-Out our Mercury in Leo Reflections –
A Poem I Deeply Associate with the Strength Tarot Card
I’d like to leave you with a poem I deeply associate with the Strength card:
“The Guest House” by Rumi.
This poem reminds us that every emotion — joy, sorrow, anger, heartbreak — is a visitor at our door, each carrying a gift, each asking to be welcomed in.
Strength is not about denying these visitors or taming them by force. It is about opening the door wide, greeting them with softness, and listening to what they have come to teach us.
May you welcome each feeling as an honored guest. May you hold your lion heart with tenderness. And may you remember: every roar, every tear, every quiet breath is part of your holy, human becoming.
Deep-Dive Guidance – Work with me!
If you’re feeling the call of your inner lion and yearning for loving support and guidance, I have tarot readings available to help you navigate this powerful season. And for those ready to go even deeper, I currently have openings for a transformative 6-month one-on-one tarot and astrology mentorship with me.
I recently made a Knight of Wands playlist, and I think this song will be a perfect addition :). Been drawing Strength a lot recently.