Notes on: Temperance

I used to dislike receiving Temperance (Card XIV in the Major Arcana) in a reading.  In fact, in some ways you could say that it was one of my least favorite cards in the deck, even though I knew it was supposed to represent something positive.  The truth is, it was all because I didn't really get it.  The supposed meaning just didn't seem to fit the picture or the name, and no amount of reading other people's interpretations of the card seemed to illuminate it.

I was uncomfortable with the imagery in the Rider-Waite version (at left), and most decks follow this prototype.  It smacks of European "high magic" to me--that peculiar blending of Christian, Kabbalistic, Egyptian, and Classical symbolism (also seen on the High Priestess) popularized by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, among others.  Such "high" magic never appealed to me, and since I never studied it, when I look at this card I am aware of a huge body of symbolism behind it, about which I know little.  I find myself looking at an image from a different culture and I feel like if only I had the right background knowledge, it would be easy to decode.  But instead what I see is like visual gibberish.

Temperance, Shadowscapes Tarot

What exactly is "temperance"?  In the Classical-meets-Judaeo-Christian tradition which has historically been so influential in Europe, temperance--or moderation, self-restraint--is extolled as one of the greatest virtues.  (I admit I'm rather lacking in this particular virtue, especially when it comes to the length of this post!)

Meanwhile, among Tarot interpreters, one of the most frequent schools of thought is that Temperance is about "balance," "harmony," and the merging of opposites (many cards depict the mixing of fire and water).  But the world is not really made of opposites.  It is a vast, intertwining network from which we arbitrarily single out certain traits, name them "good" or "bad," "man" or "woman," and so on--and call them opposites.  We use fire and water as a metaphor for opposition all the time, but in reality these are not opposite, they are just different.  Opposition is more about perception--a perception that I don't share--than it is about the true nature of the world.

In the Rider-Waite image, we see an angel standing with one foot in the water and one on land, while the wings suggest the angel is a creature of the air.  That suggests a bridging of different elements, different worlds even.  The angel occupies a liminal space which is all and yet none of those elements.  The angel is also androgynous, both male and female (or neither).  From two cups, water is poured (at an angle which defies the laws of physics, it may be added).  From this we get the sense of mixing, and perhaps equalizing the volume of water between the two vessels.  So I can see how some interpreters see the angel as balancing and harmonizing--but to me, the liminality, the both-and-yet-neitherness, of the image is what jumps out.  It certainly doesn't evoke moderation for me.

So I've always felt more at home with a yin-yang kind of interpretation, because the yin-yang symbol, or taijitu ("diagram of ultimate power"), illustrates that what appear to us as opposites are in fact commingled and complimentary aspects of a single indivisible whole.  The liminal quality of the Rider-Waite angel seemed to fit with that, although it certainly wasn't the representation I would have chosen (since, as I said, I'm not a Hermetic magician).  But a Daoist, yin-yangy interpretation seemed to be very far from what most authors said about Temperance--they were always talking about those pesky opposites.  (In fact, even though the yin-yang symbol is actually meant to remind us of the wholeness of the universe, many people incorrectly use it to support a claim that the world is made of opposites.  In fact, the expression "like yin and yang" means that things are opposite, even though this doesn't reflect the actual meaning of the symbol in Eastern philosophy.)  The Shadowscapes Tarot Temperance is my favorite because it uses the taijitu.

The Fferyllt (Temperance), Druidcraft Tarot

Some writers mention alchemy in connection with the Temperance card.  This is well-represented by the Druidcraft and the Housewives decks, both of which, in their respective ways, illustrate the idea of producing a perfect harmonious mixture. (The name of the Druidcraft card "Fferyllt," means alchemy.)  But of course in life we rarely know what the correct mixture is.  If we are asking the Tarot about it, chances are we don't have a recipe.  We are constantly fumbling along with barely a clue what we are doing, while simultaneously trying to clean up the messes we've left in our wake from previous mixtures that didn't go quite according to the recipe.  So if this is the meaning of Temperance, why don't we call it what it is and rename it Trial & Error? 

And then one day I had an epiphany, and I realized what I think is the most important message of Temperance:  synergy.  Synergy is the coming together of multiple elements to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  This is much more than disparate things simply mixing to form a synthesis. And it's nothing to do with opposites, though it can encompass the merger of apparent opposites.  However, synergy transcends the differences of its consituents.

Temperance, Houswives' Tarot

Examples of synergistic transcendence can be found in even the most seemingly humble settings.  In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes a beautiful case in point:  At Polyface Farm in Virginia, where Joel Salatin practices sustainable agriculture and stock rearing, cattle graze a patch of pasture for a day.  The pasture is composed of many different plants:  clovers, sweetgrass, bluegrass, timothy, etc.  Obviously what the cattle get out of this is healthy, nourishing food free from pesticides and artificial fertilizers, but the soil also benefits.  The plants need to keep the length of their roots about equal to the length of their leaves, so when their leaves are cropped by grazing, they jettison some of their roots.  These roots rot, fertilizing the soil, and their now empty channels become pathways for worms and other insects.  Also, of course, the soil is fertilized by the cowpats.  All this rot combines to form humus, which nourishes the plants and helps hold onto moisture.  As the cows clip the tall grasses, shorter plants like clovers are able to receive more sunlight, which the cows love, clover being one of their favorite foods.  Clovers are legumes, and like all legumes have the ability to "fix" atmospheric nitrogen (actually there are bacteria that live on their roots and they are the ones that fix the nitrogen, making it available to the plants, in return for which the legume's roots release a drop of sucrose which nourishes the bacteria).  Nitrogen is a fertilizer for all the plants in the pasture. Returning to the cattle, they help the plants to distribute their seeds, by eating them, carrying them away in their stomachs, and then depositing them in a pile of ready-made fertilizer.  Their hoofprints even collect shallow puddles of water that help the seeds germinate.

At the end of the day, the cattle are moved on--to let them graze for two days would harm the pasture and thus the soil.  But in three days, chickens take over.  Chickens need short grass since taller grass would hamper their walking, so they benefit from the cows' grazing.  They also benefit from the cowpats, which they scratch through in order to find insect larvae, which are an important source of protein for the chickens, and help produce especially delicious eggs.  In this way, the chickens stop the spread of parasites.  They leave behind their own fertilizer, which is even higher in nitrogen than cowpats are.  When they move on, the pasture gets a chance to rest and grow again before the next cycle begins.

The beauty of this system is that all parts--the soil, plants, bacteria, insects, cattle, chickens, and humans--are necessary for it to flourish, and with proper watchfulness the system is self-perpetuating.  The fact that it involves bugs and poop doesn't make it any less amazing, and that, to me, is the meaning of this card.  (Incidentally it would be marvelous to receive this card along with the 3 of Pentacles at the beginning of a joint project or venture.)

But one problem does remain, and that is the name of the card.  Nothing about its imagery seems to suggest moderation or restraint.  I think that perhaps what we are seeing here is evolution:  the Rider-Waite deck was first published in 1909, during the Victorian resurgence of magical secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Freemasons, the popularity of which has since declined.  Its imagery drew from the much older Tarot de Marseilles, but with added symbolism.  We need to understand Tarot in the English-speaking world as very much a product of the early 20th century, and as such, we should expect changes in representation and interpretation today, just as the early Tarotologists made their own changes in the Victorian age.  If there is one thing I have learned about the Tarot, it's that the cards are remarkably able to communicate with the individual reader in whatever way is necessary to get the point across; to marry ourselves to a single dogmatic meaning for each card would diminish our own and the Tarot's power and stunt our ability to develop intuitive understanding of a situation.  In short, I believe all the meanings I have discussed here are at home in the Temperance card, and which one emerges will depend on the situation and the reader.