TAROTTemperance
Upright
Moderation and balance between excess/pleasure, and abstinence/self-control.
Finding the middle ground.
Patience and understanding to promote peace and spiritual growth.
Negating extremes in your life by seeking equilibrium between them.
Intuition
Most Tarot decks show a biblical angel on the Temperance card, but this deck uses a much more ancient messenger from Heaven; the Goddess Iris.
She is associated with the rainbow, which she can make appear as the bridge between Heaven and Earth, using it for her travels.
Reversed
Lack of harmony in life.
Inability to balance the different aspects of life.
A need for self-reflection and rebalancing or simplifying your life, discarding what is not needed. Failure to do so may cause frustration and anger.
Astrologia
Optimism and a positive attitude through inner balance. Adventurous and honest. A natural philosopher. Prone to impatience, overconfidence and being aloof.
Temperance
The previous major Arcana card, Death represents the end or closure of something important. When this occurs, there is often a feeling of wanting to find peace, live better and do better to honor (or move past) the thing lost. This feeling is the essence of the Temperance card.
Temperance is one of four cardinal virtues that have their roots in Plato’s Republic and the writings of the Stoics and were later taken up by Christianity. The other virtues are prudence, justice and fortitude, although it is likely that the Tarot card actually encompasses all of them except justice (which has its own card).
Temperance is moderation. It involves moderating indulgence and pleasure with abstinence and discipline to maintain overall wellbeing. Too far in any direction leads to a lack of balance.
The four cardinal virtues were often depicted as female statues, with Temperance shown as a woman mixing wine with water (wine was rarely consumed neat in ancient times – it was mixed with water). Thus the statue of Temperance depicted getting the right balance between the pleasure of drinking wine and drinking so much alcohol that you broke norms.
There is a hidden deeper meaning relating to alchemy that was implied in some older Tarot decks. The two containers do not contain wine and water but the constituents for the Elixir of life. Perhaps this Elixir does not come from a chemical formula but instead via a formula for living well, and temperance plays a large part in this.
Temperance was also seen as a major component of Stoicism, where it was often called self-control. The idea of temperance for stoics is not to find balance but to do only that which is necessary. If you never move that far from the point of balance, you never need to find balance. Marcus Aurelius (an Emperor of Rome and a famous Stoic) said it in typically terse stoic fashion;
If you seek tranquillity, do less.
Something that proves its point by needing no explanation!
In this deck, Temperance is depicted as the Goddess Iris.
Iris
Iris literally means rainbow, the bridge between heaven and earth.
Iris is also the name for the shining halo of the moon (which is where we get iris as a part of the eye). The iris plant is associated with faith, hope and wisdom.
As with many deity names, the name Iris forms a play on words, and often alludes to something else. In this case, Iris is pronounced very close to eiris which means ‘messenger’, and Iris was also the messenger of the Gods, using the rainbow to travel quickly between heaven and earth.
Finally, and importantly, Iris was a cup-bearer to the gods, so was often depicted conveying pitchers of liquid.
Description and Symbology
We see the Goddess Iris holding two pitchers; one containing wine and the other containing water. Behind her, we see a rainbow. The sky appears in two halves;
- On the left, we see a bright blue sky. This represents the normal physical world.
- On the right, we see a pale, otherworldly sky (which is actually a negative of the night sky). This represents the spiritual or divine world.
The rainbow bridges between both of these worlds, with Iris between them. As a messenger between both worlds, she is a mediator between them, creating balance. Without communication, things always fall out of balance.
Near to Iris we see a dove, the sign of peace and purity. Temperance provides both peace and purity to body and mind. Without peace and purity you are unlikely to be receptive to the final part of temperance; spiritual wisdom.
The remaining symbology matches the standard Tarot card;
- Iris has one foot on land and the other in the water (and the water in the Temperance card is often understood to be the same body of water seen in the High Priestess card), suggesting balance between the physical and the subconscious.
- To the left we see a long path leading from the water to the mountains behind. It stops at a temple with smoke or light emanating from the building towards the heavens, suggesting meeting with the deity. The path suggests that temperance puts us on the path of enlightenment, but the journey is not complete.
Card symbol
The card symbol is an iris, symbol of faith, hope and wisdom.
Temperance as moderation
Iris holds a pitcher of wine and another of diluting water. This is how wine was drunk in earlier times, and the diluting is a common symbol of moderation.
Iris as the messenger of the Gods
Iris has a halo, denoting her position as messenger of the Gods. The rainbow behind her is a more ancient symbol of the same thing, as it represents a connection between heaven and earth.
Dove
The Dove represents peace and purity, two requirements that need to be in place before spiritual wisdom can grow.
Earth and water as opposites
Iris has one foot on the earth and the other in the water, symbolizing her balance between the needs of the physical and spiritual worlds. This also represents the balance between the rational, practical mind and the intuitive mind. This same symbology is shown via the left and right skies, again suggesting the physical and spiritual planes and the balance needed between both to live well.
The long path
To the left side of the card we see a path snaking up towards the hills and stopping at a temple. The temple has a pillar of smoke or light that connects it to the sky and the divine. Temperance puts us on this path, but there is still more distance to travel (i.e. the rest of the Major Arcana).
Tips for Readings
The following table shows the upright and reverse meanings for general questions. The last row ('Yes/No') is useful when you are picking a single card to decide a yes or no decision.
Upright
Reversed
Patience and understanding are key. No one-sided emotional outbursts or anger, instead look for balance and the middle ground.
Expect conflicts, misunderstandings, and an unhealthy atmosphere unless you concentrate on communication, compromise, and finding a middle ground with those around you.
Collaboration rather than going it alone will come to the fore. Openness to other’s opinions and workflows will make for more rounded and successful progress.
Challenges related to collaboration, teamwork, or balance between work and personal life.
Strive to find a better balance.
Moderation in all things – temperance – is paramount. Too much of anything becomes either unhealthy or an obsession.
Check your lifestyle for over-eating or over-indulging, lack of exercise, poor sleep, or neglecting self-care.
Thoughts and beliefs should not be idle platitudes but match your actions and emotions. This will cause mind:body balance; doing the right thing as opposed to just thinking it.
Difficulty finding peace, which will show as anxiety or a sense of unease. This is caused by a misalignment between needs, beliefs and actions, which should be addressed - however difficult that may be.
Look to balancing your finances so they give you something for the future whilst making today better. This will work out better in the long term.
Impulsive spending or otherwise not dealing with money matters will cause debts or losing control of your finances.
Focus on proper budgeting and fix inner problems with open communication rather than retail-therapy.
Yes, through balance in life
No through lack of balance between wants and needs.
Reading the Card
The upright card
The upright Temperance card represents a balanced life. Life will flow smoothly as pleasures are moderated against spiritual needs within all aspects of life to produce good health and mental growth.
The card encourages several aspects to achieve this balance;
- Maintaining equilibrium between pleasures and spiritual growth. Some teachings promote total abstinence instead of moderation but in many ways that is as much an imbalance as giving up your life to vices; it will not be sustainable (unless you have a halo and wings, or horns and a tail!).
- Balancing different aspects of your life. Work vs play, embracing change vs building safety and structure, fame vs obscurity, investing in yourself vs being a team player, living for the present moment vs working towards the future. All sound mutually exclusive but they actually represent a range. Temperance encourages us to find the ideal in all of them so you move forward as a well-balanced individual.
- Patience and understanding. Self-control and avoiding extremes of behavior is often needed to maintain a balanced state in life.
- Communication. Iris is a messenger between heaven and earth, and temperance within the person involves keeping pleasure and spiritual growth working together as a greater whole. Similarly, communication with others in relationships and the workplace will benefit from maintaining communication, because without it, things drift apart and become imbalanced. Further, the only thing that can really fix a broken mind is being with other minds; loneliness and lack of communication is a hidden killer. It is always good to talk!
- Personal health. A healthy body is needed for a healthy mind. Exercise, sleep and recreation are all important.
Finally another word from the Stoics. Epictetus, a famous stoic philosopher was once asked what simple words would make a better person. His answer;
Persist and resist.
Persist towards what you know is good with courage, patience and perseverance. Resist what your intuition and wisdom tells you is bad. These are the two ingredients of true freedom, and Epictetus should know (he was born a slave).
The reversal
The reversed Temperance card suggests a lack of balance within one or more parts of your life, or that different parts of your life are actively in conflict.
Consider the points for the upright card and whether they are being blocked by impulsiveness, greed and focus on the material world, dreaming of the next world before you are done in this one, lack of communication and disconnecting from others, and neglecting your health.
Again, the ancient philosophers make the best points. Epicurus was a Hedonist, but this hedonism was tempered by the avoidance of pain. He concluded that the simple pleasures of life are all that are needed (hence we see vices curtailed by their result, getting you back to temperance!). His most famous quote is probably also a good solution to fixing the problems of a reversed Temperance;
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Most people can become a better person immediately by realizing they are already all they once wished for.
Card Design Process
The hardest part of this card was deciding how to show the spiritual world, and many increasingly complex ideas were tried. In the end, reading back the original notes that make up this text did it; ‘do less’. Thus, a photo of the night sky containing the moon was taken and the colors inverted. Simple!
Final Words
The temperance card represents a way to be a good and stable person through moderation of excess and concentrating on the least number of things that are important.
