Lifestyle
2024 will test us. What can we learn from Strength, tarot's card of the year?
Years ago, when they were feeling lost and directionless and leaning too heavily on their vices, Edgar Fabián Frías cast a spell on themself. As part of the process, the L.A. based artist, therapist and magical practitioner decided they would pull a tarot card and get whatever they selected tattooed on their arm.
As luck (or the universe) would have it, Frías pulled the Strength card. Since then, they’ve had a line drawing of a feminine figure leaning comfortably against a large orangutan on their left bicep. “Fuerza” (Spanish for strength) is written in blue ink beneath the image. (The traditional Strength card usually depicts a lion rather than an orangutan, but in tarot, everything is open to interpretation.)
“It helped me on my healing journey, and I find the card often connects with people who are trying to recover or find themselves,” Frías said. “It’s like an angel or a guide that comes at just the right moment.”
If you too feel like you could use some Strength energy in your life, you’re in luck. Tarot practitioners say the Strength card is 2024’s card of the year. That’s because 2+0+2+4=8, and Strength is the eighth card in most modern English-language tarot decks. Just like honoring the seasonal rhythms of the year or the phases of the moon, working with the card of the year can be a way to frame and contextualize a specific period of time.
“When we talk about the card of the year, we can think about what energies are associated with it that can help guide or support us or potentially give us some clues into the theme of the year,” said author and artist Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, who also leads tarot workshops.
For example, in 2023 — a Chariot card year — Eliza Swann, founder of the Golden Dome School, a mystery school for artists with branches in New York and L.A., moved houses four times. (The Chariot card is traditionally associated with movement and momentum).
“I never had a more insane moving moment,” Swann said. “And I thought, ‘Well, it’s a Chariot year.’ It helped me look at this crazy movement as having a mythic framework.”
For Frías, 2023’s Chariot year was an invitation to contemplate the direction of their life, where they were headed and the parts of their life where they didn’t feel empowered or in control. In this Strength year, they plan to think about ways to receive, call in and cultivate strength to make big changes happen.
“It’s about turning inward toward ourselves and opening up our hearts,” Frías said. “Some call it the conscious and unconscious coming together.”
In the most popular and iconic tarot deck, known as the Rider-Waite-Smith and first published in 1910, the Strength card depicts a woman in a long white dress leaning over a lion with its tail between its legs. An infinity sign floats over her head, suggesting she might be a divine figure, and she seems to be using gentle pressure to close the lion’s mouth and calm it. The lion radiates a wild energy, but it looks up at her with something like trust. The woman is serene and unafraid.
The divinatory meaning of the card is “power, energy, action, courage, and magnanimity,” according to the little white book that accompanies the deck.
When the card is reversed (meaning it shows up upside down in a spread), it means “abuse of power, despotism, weakness and discord.” But most tarot readers say the imagery of the card suggests a more broad and expansive interpretation.
For Gottesdiener, the card is a reminder that strength is often soft and unforced and that we can look at our true natures with compassion. “There’s this relationship with animal nature or animalistic instinct,” she said. “She’s greeting this beast, this king of the jungle, and she’s not afraid of it. She’s greeting it for what it is.”
This could lead us to see 2024 as a year to reacquaint ourselves with desire, pleasure and play, she said. “We’re going inward to meet the beast. [In 2024,] we’ll be tasked with thinking about ‘What are our true natures?’ and ‘What do they need to flourish and grow?’”
Swann said the Strength card is associated with Cybele, an iron meteorite that was celebrated as a mother goddess in Anatolia (the region now called Turkey). “I think of Strength as this really beautiful, divine, feminine ecstatic energy — this wildly sizzling meteorite,” Swann said. “And I think of her as the goddess of settling the score.”
On the collective level, Swann sees Strength card energy in all those who are rising up to make their voices heard. “All the labor unions striking is Strength,” they said. “The energy of organizing and making things more equitable is Strength.”
But the card also has a shadow side, Frías said. This includes feeling overwhelmed, pessimistic, letting emotions control you, self-hatred and building walls between yourself and others.
“In 2024, we need to listen with our hearts and develop practices that help us cultivate hope, eagerness, joy and pleasure,” Frías said. “Especially when it’s hard to do so.”
If you’d like to try working with the energy of the Strength card this year, there are lots of easy ways to start. Frías usually keeps the card of the year on their altar as a reminder to look for the various ways its themes might show up over the next 12 months. If you don’t have an altar, you can make the card the picture on your phone’s home screen or tape a photocopy of it on your nightstand. (An image that represents strength to you would also work.) You also can gather friends to talk about your own strengths.
“We’re taught to be humble and not name our own strengths, so saying them out loud would be a good practice,” Swann said.
And because Cybele’s festivities occurred around the spring equinox, Swann suggests imagining planting the seeds of your desires now and watching them erupt in the spring. “On the individual level, Strength is about working with the energy of desire to achieve goals and working with your own strengths, whatever they happen to be, so you get concrete results,” they said.
Perhaps, most simply, you can just meditate on what strength means to you. “You can look at where you have to be stronger, look at the divide between what you say and what you do,” Gottesdiener said. “You can also be really mindful about where you, yourself, might be in the card with your relationships and your life.”
The ultimate goal, she said, is to take the archetype out of the deck and bring it into your life.
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
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1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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