Temperance

  • Arcana Major
  • Number XIV
  • Figure on this site the cup of Suttungr
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

Temperance is one of the virtues, a figure from medieval and Renaissance art, and the early Italian trump cards drew on that tradition. Renaissance pictures of the virtue often show a woman mixing wine with water, which is one way the idea of “tempering” was shown. Two early decks show a plain scene: in the hand-painted Charles VI cards (about 1450) and the block-printed Rosenwald card (about 1475), liquid pours between two undecorated pots, and the figure has a halo. One source notes that the images it shows of these two decks are modern recreations, so details may differ from the originals.

The card was not always where it stands now. In some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian decks the virtues were grouped after the Pope, beside the Chariot and the Lovers, and the Tarocchino and Minchiate decks kept that habit. Wikipedia says the oldest Italian decks numbered the card VI or VII. The Tarot de Marseille spaced the three virtues at 8, 11 and 14, which put Temperance at XIV, between Death and the Devil, the number most modern decks use.

The Marseille pattern appeared in the early seventeenth century and left the card largely unchanged from then on, for example in Dodal’s Lyon deck of 1701. Its figure is a winged angel in an S-shaped pose, feet hidden by the robe, with a red mark on the forehead. A different pattern from northern France and Belgium, first seen in the Vievil deck (Paris, about 1650), shows a woman pouring water into a bowl on the ground. What the designers intended is not recorded; reading the Marseille angel as Archangel Michael is a modern suggestion.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909 with Waite supplying the instructions, and William Rider & Son of London published it that December. Both belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Temperance card follows the description Waite gives in his book rather than the Marseille picture.

The figure is a winged angel, neither clearly male nor female, with one foot on land and one in water, pouring liquid from one cup to another. The Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters of the divine name, sits on the angel’s chest above a square and a triangle. The Marseille card has no such symbols. Tarot Heritage notes that Waite’s card follows the description of an angel with a sun sign and a poured “elixir” given by Éliphas Lévi.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

A winged angel, with the sign of the sun upon his forehead and on his breast the square and triangle of the septenary. I speak of him in the masculine sense, but the figure is neither male nor female. It is held to be pouring the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of the essences. A direct path goes up to certain heights on the verge of the horizon, and above there is a great light, through which a crown is seen vaguely. Hereof is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as it is possible to man in his incarnation. All the conventional emblems are renounced herein.

So also are the conventional meanings, which refer to changes in the seasons, perpetual movement of life and even the combination of ideas. It is, moreover, untrue to say that the figure symbolizes the genius of the sun, though it is the analogy of solar light, realized in the third part of our human triplicity. It is called Temperance fantastically, because, when the rule of it obtains in our consciousness, it tempers, combines and harmonises the psychic and material natures. Under that rule we know in our rational part something of whence we came and whither we are going.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

The fifteenth-century trumps carried no fixed occult meanings; these were added later. Antoine Court de Gébelin gave the trumps Egyptian, kabbalistic and divine significance in his essay on the tarot in Le Monde Primitif (a work in nine volumes, 1773 to 1782). The cards themselves are Italian in origin. Etteilla, who developed a method of divination with the cards, also claimed an Egyptian origin and named card XIV “Temperance, Priest”.

In the nineteenth century Éliphas Lévi tied the tarot to the Kabbalah. According to Tarot Heritage he described the Temperance angel with a sun sign pouring an elixir, and Waite’s card follows that picture. The same source says the Golden Dawn assigned the card the Hebrew letter Samekh.

None of this comes from the fifteenth-century cards, and the Norse figures used on this site are our own modern addition.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: balance, moderation, patient blending, temperance

The mead of poetry was hoarded by the giant Suttungr and won back through patience and careful negotiation, not force. This card is balance achieved through blending — finding the right mixture rather than reaching for an extreme in either direction. If something feels like it needs moderating, that's the work: not abstaining entirely, not indulging completely, but finding the measure that actually serves you, even if it takes longer than either extreme would.

In general: The answer here isn't more or less; it's the right combination. Patience with the mixing matters more than speed.

In love: A relationship finding its right rhythm, neither too much togetherness nor too much distance, through ongoing, patient adjustment.

In work: Balancing competing demands skillfully rather than sacrificing one entirely for the other. The blend takes calibration, not haste.

Reversed

Keywords: excess, extremes, imbalance, overindulgence or deprivation

Suttungr hoarded the mead because he had no interest in moderation, only possession. The reversed card shows what happens without the patient blending: excess in one direction or deprivation in the other, with no middle ground in sight. Whatever's out of balance here didn't get that way overnight, and it won't correct overnight either, but the first step is admitting that an extreme, in either direction, has taken hold.

In general: Something has swung too far toward one extreme. The corrective isn't the opposite extreme; it's the middle you've been avoiding.

In love: A relationship lurching between too much intensity and too much distance, with no sustainable rhythm settling in between.

In work: Overcommitting in one area while neglecting another entirely, rather than finding a workable balance between competing demands.

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