What does Temperance have to offer in a tarot reading?

It turns out Temperance is a beautiful card with a beautiful meaning.  Too often I brush it off with an overall explanation around ‘issues with patience’…which is accurate enough but misses describing what temperance might feel like beyond being patient and self-restrained.

Cooling our passions and walking the path of moderation….

Recently I got Temperance in a tarot reading and last week a contemporary received it also.   She like me still has the urge to be ‘doing something with her life’. Everything feels a bit groundhog day, a bit tame, where is the challenge, excitement, where’s the travel and adventure.  She has the time, she has the money, and yet she doesn’t get up and go …(and who wants to travel alone). You can see the frustration, we want ‘more’ but we don’t know what.   We wonder whether getting out of bed whenever we wish in the morning is a sign of laziness or a new pleasure to be enjoyed because we don’t need to go to the office or ‘do’ anything!   

Temperance may be a virtue but it is not one we are seeking. What do we do with our desire for more fulfilment? Are we expected to settle for dealing with the daily grind of the ‘to do list’, which doesn’t seem to diminish, and only gets more difficult with everything being online! It’s a conundrum.

Which got me pondering Temperance and what more she holds for us.  More googling and I must say AI is good.  However I skip about on a lot of sites as a lot of people write beautifully about Tarot.

And these are the words I don’t mention in tarot readings, harmony, balance, calm, tranquillity, serenity, healing…..pleasure!   Pleasure! That moderation, walking the middle path, avoiding extremes & addiction will lead to more connection to ourselves, to divine guidance and become a pleasure.

I have to admit I have found great moments of peace and contentment during Sober October!

Yet I feel plagued, or perhaps thwarted would be a fairer word, by the idea that I need to achieve more, that I need to grow, learn, improve, and that the way forward lies in my finding the right sort of stimulation, new situation, new challenge, new people, new experience.

What if the opposite is ‘true’.  What if I and my lovely client have done plenty of that in our 70 odd years and now there’s a different pleasure afoot that comes from walking the middle path. What if we cool our fiery Aries passion and choose to be more balanced and peaceful. (See the triangle inside the square on the chest of our lady in white, the sign of earth containing fire,  representing grounding and balancing passion.)

The card depicts an oasis of calm, a women has one toe in the water, (emotions, spirituality) and the other on dry land (grounded in reality), yellow iris (a symbol of the Greek goddess Iris, who passed messages between the gods and humans) flower on the bank.  The iris also represents deep bonds of love. I like the idea that with Temperance we may receive messages from the divine and feel deeper connection…

There is a sunrise shining at the end of the path depicted on the Temperance card. What if by embodying an oasis of calm, of taking the path of moderation and self restraint leads to a new dawn?  It’s almost as if when we get less proactive, less demanding, a path opens up to some new possibility. Have you noticed that sometimes when you have a ‘problem’ and don’t know what to do, the best thing to do is leave it alone, and wait and somehow the universe finds a solution!

Temperance also asks us to cultivate a balance between giving and receiving. The Queen of Cups when she gets unbalanced gives too much and isn’t good at receiving.

I know how imbalance feels!  Too rushed, too much on the ‘to do’ list, too many demands on time, too much going out, too many glasses of wine, too much ‘doing’ and not enough ‘being’. And after all that activity I’m not sure I feel particularly satisfied, there’s still the niggle of dissatisfaction.

So this middle road, this road of practising moderation, of cooling my desires for this and for that, while not sounding fun perhaps the metaphor extends to arriving at an oasis, thirsty, tired, worn out, and by sipping the cool waters of this oasis, of Temperance, I discover it’s secret pleasure, and that after chasing rainbows across a desert and getting exhausted in the process, tranquillity and serenity is the nourishment I am after. And even better when balance and harmony are restored, fully refreshed I will discover a new dawn at the end of the road!

What’s not to love.

Good luck everyone.

Do come and have a tarot reading with me in Battersea or online.  Both work wonderfully.