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Temperance

MAJOR ARCANA · XIV

Temperance is card XIV of the major arcana. A winged angel pours water back and forth between two cups, one foot in the water and one on land. Upright, it stands for harmony, moderation and blending; reversed, for excess, imbalance and impatience.

Name and number

Upright meaning

Keywords: harmony, moderation, blending, healing, patience

After Death, what was broken or separated is slowly made to blend again. Temperance is the card of that quiet handwork.

Upright, Temperance stands for blending different things well: work and rest, ideals and reality, your views and another's. Not leaning to one side, but searching for the right proportion. It is read that by avoiding extremes and adjusting little by little as you go, things settle down. It appears around recovery of mind or body, reconciliation, and dealings between people of different positions.

Reversed meaning

Keywords: excess, imbalance, impatience, mismatch

Reversed, Temperance is read as the poured water spilling.

Something is too much, like overeating or overworking. Feelings and actions do not match. Rushing for results and unable to wait for things to blend. Between people, it shows attempts to meet halfway not working and misunderstandings continuing. It is read as a time to pause and review the proportions.

What the picture shows

• The water flowing between two cups: the work of blending two things to make the right mixture. In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck the water flows at a curious slant.
• One foot in the water, one on land: standing in two worlds at once: feeling and reality, mind and body.
• The triangle and square on the breast: on the Rider–Waite–Smith angel, a triangle within a square, said to stand for the harmony of spirit and matter.
• The irises: flowers named for Iris, goddess of the rainbow, a sign of what links heaven and earth.
• The path to the mountain and the crown of light: the place to aim for at the end of a slow journey.

History

Temperance, like Strength and Justice, is a card of one of the four cardinal virtues handed down from antiquity.

The "temperance" here meant watering down wine. In medieval and Renaissance art, the virtue of Temperance was shown as a woman pouring liquid between two jugs: a figure for not drinking too much, not going too far. Temperance in the fifteenth-century Italian Visconti–Sforza deck is also a woman pouring water from jug to jug.

In the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Tarot of Marseille, the woman gained wings and became an angel, pouring water between a blue jug and a red one. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck took this over and added the pose with one foot in water and one on land, and a path toward distant mountains. The meaning widened from a warning against excess to the work of harmonizing two things.

Correspondences

Previous and next cards

• Previous: 13 Death
• Next: 15 The Devil
• The major arcana

Lucky colors for Temperance