TAROTTemperance
Upright
Moderation and balance between excess/pleasure, and abstinence/self-control.
Finding the middle ground.
Patience and understanding, promoting 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 desire to find peace, live better, and honor (or move past) the thing lost. This feeling is the essence of the Temperance card.
Temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues rooted in Plato’s Republic and the writings of the Stoics, later adopted by Christianity. The other virtues are prudence, justice, and fortitude, although it is likely that the Temperance Tarot card actually encompasses all of them except Justice (which has its own card).
Temperance is moderation. It involves balancing indulgence and pleasure with abstinence and discipline to maintain overall well-being. Going too far in any direction leads to a lack of balance.
The four cardinal virtues were often depicted as female statues. Temperance is typically shown as a woman mixing wine with water (wine was rarely consumed neat in ancient times; it was mixed with water). Thus, the statue depicted the right balance between the pleasure of drinking and the excess of intoxication.
There is a hidden, deeper meaning relating to alchemy implied in some older Tarot decks. The two containers do not hold wine and water, but the constituents for the Elixir of Life. Perhaps this Elixir does not come from a chemical formula, but from a formula for living well, where temperance plays a crucial role.
Temperance was also a major component of Stoicism, where it was called self-control. The Stoic idea of temperance is not about finding balance, but doing only what is necessary. If you never stray far from the center, you never need to find balance. Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor and famous Stoic) said it in typically terse fashion:
If you seek tranquility, do less.
This proves its point by needing no explanation.
In this deck, Temperance is depicted as the Goddess Iris.
Iris
In this deck, Temperance is depicted as the goddess Iris. Her name literally means 'rainbow': the bridge between heaven and earth. It is also the name for the shining halo of the moon (which gives us the 'iris' of the eye). The iris plant itself is associated with faith, hope, and wisdom.
As with many deity names, Iris forms a play on words. It is pronounced very similarly to eiris, which means 'messenger'. Iris was a 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, the other water. Behind her arches a rainbow. The sky is split into two halves:
- The Left: A bright blue sky representing the normal, physical world.
- The Right: A pale, otherworldly sky (actually a negative of the night sky) representing the spiritual or divine world.
The rainbow bridges these two worlds, with Iris standing between them. As a messenger, she is a mediator, creating balance. Without communication, things inevitably fall out of balance.
Near Iris flies a dove, the sign of peace and purity. Temperance provides both to the body and mind. Without them, you are unlikely to be receptive to the final goal of temperance: spiritual wisdom.
- The remaining symbology matches the standard Tarot card:
- Foot in the Water: Iris has one foot on land and the other in the water (often understood to be the same body of water seen in the High Priestess card). This suggests balance between the physical world and the Unconscious.
- The Path: To the left, a long path leads from the water to the mountains, stopping at a temple. Light and smoke emanate from the building toward the heavens, suggesting a meeting with the divine. The path signifies that temperance puts us on the road to higher consciousness, but the journey is not yet 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 required 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, producing good health and mental growth across all aspects of life.
The card encourages several aspects to achieve this balance:
- Maintaining Equilibrium: Balancing pleasure and spiritual growth. Some teachings promote total abstinence over moderation. However, total abstinence is as much an imbalance as surrendering to vice; it is rarely sustainable.
- Balancing Life Aspects: Work versus play, embracing change versus building safety, fame versus obscurity, self-investment versus teamwork, living for the present versus planning for the future. These sound mutually exclusive, but they represent a spectrum. Temperance encourages finding the ideal point on that spectrum to move forward as a well-balanced individual.
- Patience and Understanding: Self-control and the avoidance of extreme behavior are necessary to maintain a balanced state.
- Communication: Iris is a messenger between heaven and earth. Internal temperance involves keeping pleasure and spiritual growth communicating as a greater whole. Externally, relationships and workplaces require constant communication; without it, things drift and become imbalanced. Furthermore, the only thing that can truly fix a broken mind is connection with other minds. Loneliness is a hidden killer. Talk.
- Personal Health: A healthy body is required for a healthy mind. Exercise, sleep, and recreation are all vital.
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 toward what you know is good with courage, patience, and perseverance. Resist what your intuition and wisdom tell 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 areas of your life, or that different parts of your life are actively in conflict.
Review the points for the Upright card and consider whether they are being blocked by impulsiveness, greed, a hyper-focus on the material world, dreaming of the 'next world' before you are done with this one, a lack of communication, or neglecting your health.
Again, the ancient philosophers make the best points. Epicurus was a Hedonist, but his hedonism was tempered by the avoidance of pain. He concluded that the simple pleasures of life are all that are needed. His most famous quote is an excellent solution to 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.
You can elevate your life immediately by realizing you already possess what you once wished for.
Card Design Process
The hardest part of this design was deciding how to show the spiritual world; many increasingly complex ideas were tried. In the end, reading back the original notes that make up this text provided the answer: 'do less'. Thus, a photo of the night sky containing the moon was taken, and the colors were simply inverted.
Final Words
The Temperance card represents the path to stability through the moderation of excess, concentrating only on the vital few things that are truly important.
