Temperance

Traditionally, Temperance is blending, patience, the middle way, alchemy that does not rush. In Rider-Waite-Smith teaching this is moderation, healing, the mixing of opposites into something liveable. Waite's angel is not a preacher. The angel is a worker of fluids.

One foot in water, one on land. Two cups, a stream pouring between them, often against ordinary gravity. A path runs back to mountains and a gold crown-sun. Irises grow at the bank. The traditional reading is: combine. Temper. Do not smash the remaining pieces after Death. Mix them until they can travel.

Keep that. Then look. Traditional Temperance can be recovery, art, a right pace, a gifted diplomat of the inner life. It can also be blandness, spiritual mixing-as-avoidance, or a person so devoted to balance they will not taste anything. The two cups and the two feet will tell you whether this is alchemy or beige.

Look at the feet first. One in the pool, one on the earth. Why both, and why not The Star's similar stance yet? This angel is standing to work. The Star will kneel to pour. Look at the cups. The water is travelling between them in a line that should not be so obedient. Ask what is being transferred, and what would spill if the angel hurried.

The path is a pale road to mountains and a crown of sun. Someone is supposed to walk after this mixing. The irises are at the water's edge, living, specific, not The Empress's wheat. The square on the chest, the triangle on the linen, the sun-disk on the brow: this is a dressed intelligence, not a wild spirit.

The wings are red. The gown is white. The face is calm and busy. Notice there is no human querent in the scene. You are being shown a process, not a personality. Where does the eye go: cups, feet, path, irises, the far crown? That is where the tempering is for you.

Two cups and a flow between them is the whole method of the card. Investigate the direction. Is something being poured from higher to lower, or circulating? Do not file water as emotion and stop. In this picture water is a craft. Ask what two things in the question refuse to be in the same stream.

One foot in water, one on land is the same split The High Priestess held as pillars, now walked. The path and the crown-sun are a destination that is not here yet, unlike The Sun card's full noon. Irises are messengers, sword-lilies, a flower of the rainbow in old talk. Ask whether this healing is a road, or a pretty bank you could stay on forever.

White gown, red wings, gold path and crown, blue of the water and mountains, the violet of the irises. The white is doing the clean work. The red in the wings is heat still in the angel: this is not a bloodless peace. If the gold of the far crown feels like a true aim, keep it. If it feels like a spiritual carrot so you never finish mixing, keep that. Colour here is the climate of a laboratory that looks like a landscape.

Fourteen as a tempered seven-and-seven, or as a five if reduced: a test that has become a practice. In this card the number is the quality of working past the crisis without pretending the crisis did not happen. Death was thirteen. This is the even-handed next. Feel whether the evenness is skill, or a smoothing that erases the bone.

Fourteen as a tempered seven-and-seven, or as a five if reduced: a test that has become a practice. In this card the number is the quality of working past the crisis without pretending the crisis did not happen. Death was thirteen. This is the even-handed next. Feel whether the evenness is skill, or a smoothing that erases the bone.

Sagittarius is the usual correspondence. Sagittarius as the path, the aim, the philosophy that wants a horizon, the teacher, the restlessness that can ruin a good mix by leaving too soon.

That can deepen a reading about meaning after loss, about travel, about a faith that is a road rather than a church. The path to the crown is already in the picture. If Sagittarius would only be adventurous personality, skip it. Use it when the mixing is in service of a far aim, or when the far aim is being used to avoid the cups in the hands.

Circulating, moderating, slowly moving. This is not Death's cut and not The Devil's glue. The energy is a pour, a tempering of heat, a path being prepared.

Feel whether the circulation is alive or stagnant. Temperance energy can heal a life that has been all skeleton and all craving. It can also be the spiritual beige that never makes a mark.

True mixing. Patience with a path in it. Opposites allowed in the same body without a war and without a chain.

Blandness, delay dressed as alchemy, or mixing until nothing has a taste. A peace that is really a refusal to arrive at The Devil's honest want or The Tower's honest crack.

Fourteen sits between Death's clearing and The Devil's bind. After the horse, a healing interval. Number fourteen reduces to five if you need that: something new entering the square that Death left. In the picture it is more useful as a two-and-two: two cups, two realms under the feet, the work of making a third thing without a third cup.

The Devil is next. Feel the neighbour as a warning about what blending can become. Temperance mixes in service of a path. The Devil mixes until you cannot tell the chain from the want. If you only read Temperance as be nice and balanced, you will miss why the sequence puts an angel with a discipline of pouring just before a figure who is very good at mixing pleasure with glue.

What is in each cup, and what happens if I refuse to let them meet?

Which foot is wet, and which is on land, in this question?

Is this mixing a craft, or a way never to choose?

Where does the path actually go, and am I walking it?

What heat is still in the red wings that I am trying to white-gown away?

As advice, Temperance is mix, wait, walk. As a situation, a healing is in progress and will not be hurried. As a person, the mediator, the nurse of the psyche, the artist. As a block, endless process.

After Death, this is what you do with the remainder. Before The Devil, the mix can still go wrong if want is not admitted. Next to The Star, two pourers: one standing in office, one kneeling in grace. Concrete example: Temperance in the outcome of a post-breakup spread, next to the Two of Cups, is not you will get back together in a balanced way. It is you will have to learn a new pour. The old cups are not coming back as they were.

Look at Temperance. Watch the line of water between the cups. Write the two ingredients you are currently trying to live with at once. Then look at the path and the far crown and write whether your mixing has a destination or only a bank of irises. Practice Room. Pour slowly on the page. No slogan about balance.