After Death the Fool encounters Temperance, the watery, open-hearted, healing immersion that follows endings and total dissolution. Temperance is a wonderful energy that is a little wild and unexpected. After Death, who could have imagined such a beautiful rebirth? Although Death certainly feels complete and final, we learn in life that although certainly things end and finish, they also feed into the next phase of the creative the cycle that offers rebirth after death. Before a time of a big transition, before we die to the next way of being, we can cannot imagine what lay before us; it takes traversing the threshold and crossing over from one way of being to another.
Temperance is number fourteen, the one of the Magician and the four of the Emperor, signifying manifestation, a sacred container, foundational energy. Here, Temperance is at the end of the second cycle of seven, moving from the completion of subconscious energies and teachings into the realms of spiritual truths, disengaged compassion, and soulful nourishment of the superconscious.
In my own life, I experienced a powerful and literal embodiment of the transition from Death to Temperance. As mentioned in the Death card, I had a baby daughter named Rubybleu who stopped breathing shortly after birth. She was full term, yet for some unknown reason she left almost as quickly as she arrived. After a few days in intensive care, it became clear she wasn’t meant to stay; we took her off the machines and she passed away in my arms. When her dad and I cremated her, the ashes turned red and blue, a total mystery! I have often been inspired by the mixing of these two colors red and blue and viewed their appearance in this magical way as a pure expression of temperance. Rubybleu’s death was a catalyst for a much deeper life experience for me and my path and transformed my awareness of death and dying into a powerful recognition of spirit and beauty.
As a verb, to “temper” is to “act as a neutralizing or counterbalancing force to something.” In metallurgy, tempering finds balance in metal that is neither to hot nor too cold, allowing the metal to be bent and shaped into something new. It is an ongoing process, a constant calibration. Temperance is constant reminder of this relationship with ourselves, our mind, our practice, people in our lives, our community, our world—not too tight and not too loose. The dynamic energy and creativity found in Temperance is more spiritual and refined than earlier cards such as the Empress or the Lovers. It holds the wisdom of the path walked and the wisdom of the thirteen cards before it learned, from the Magician to Death. There is more ease in the healing and can indicate an unlikely healing or mixing of unexpected forces. The work of Temperance offers loosening, mixing up, and softening.
Crowley termed this card “Art,” which also invokes the passionate meeting of opposites. Whenever we bring together new qualities, we create something new. Mixing together fire and ice, hot and cold, blue and red, light and dark, this card shows a figure putting together raw elements provides the potential for infinite possibilities. This is the alchemical process of transforming raw into refined which also applies to our emotional body, spiritual work and self-inquiry process. Through Temperance we access the capability to transmute our pain into power, anger into compassion, poison into nectar.
In Waite-Smith imagery, a divine winged non-gendered being pours water back and forth between two vessels, refining, reviewing, renewing and refreshing. One foot rests on the earth and the other in the water revealing our connection to both the material world and the spiritual world. This is an essence dialogue between our form body and our spiritual self that goes beyond form. Tuning into Temperance provides us with creative, nourishing, soulful beauty and helps us to manifest this into form. The wings symbolize the connection to divine source and regenerative essence level qualities that we can tap into after Death, preparing us for the next part of the journey.
In the Crowley deck, the card’s title, Art, evokes powerful creative expression. Here we see a figure who embodies the coming together of opposites—male and female, light and dark pouring the opposing elements of fire and ice into a vessel. This symbolizes the merging of opposites and alchemical creation to form something completely different, manifesting beauty following death and dissolution. The process is akin to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar who dissolves into imaginal cells before reforming into the outrageous beauty of the butterfly.
The card features the same lion and eagle from the Lovers card, but the colors have switched. Instead of a white eagle and red lion, we see a red eagle and white lion indicating the connection to the Lovers and the merging of two energies. The Temperance card is the Lovers card exalted. In the Lovers, we often express our sexual/sensual selves with a partner or an experience. With Temperance, it is still possible to have an experience with a lover but we may also discover an opportunity to use and transform sexual energy into creative expression through art, invention, writing, movement, community building, or planting our garden.
When Temperance appears in a reading, it indicates a sense of balance, harmony, and beauty. It signifies the arrival of restoration and regeneration. It can indicate an unlikely healing or newly forming creative expression at play. This card is positively indicated for relationships, work and health but may involve loosening our preconceived notions around what a partner or job or healing method may look like. When opposite forces are brought together, often solutions come in a surprising or creative manner that seem to benefit many.
Temperance or Art as the exalted lovers may indicate the arrival of new partner or someone with whom you will be potentially creating new projects. It is a call to do something that you may have done before but in a completely new way, with a new person or people or different materials. It is an invitation to mix and combine forces and be open to things you would normally be resistant or even opposed to. This card is the reminder that something new cannot be created with movement, letting go, dynamism and a willingness to explore and discover.
Essential Qualities: art, creativity, flow, beauty, tempering, mixing, melding, healing, wonder, openness, guidance, angelic, divine, source
Suggestions: Do a spiritual practice that inspires you! Visualize your energy field illuminated with rainbow colored lights and see the world around you as a mandala of enlightened glowing beings. Welcome the opportunity to transform raw emotion and negative thoughts into creative expression and compassionate actions. Mix together unlikely energies: throw a party and invite different kinds of friends, do something you don’t usually do or haven’t done in years, ask for spiritual guidance, paint, draw, dance, free flow!
Temperance/Art Card Layout: Elemental Perspectives
This spread is helpful for issues around relationships, creative projects, building on ideas, or anything that you feel needs deeper understanding with a fresh new perspective. Create an altar that has opposite energies symbolizing coming together: red and blue colors; a bowl of water and a candle; hard stone and soft ash. These also embody aspects of the natural and elemental world, reminding us of the dynamic mixture and interplay between elemental creation and dissolution. Make your space, light the candles and call in the helpers and guides. Take a moment to clearly visualize and center your awareness on the question at hand before shuffling and laying out the cards.
• Card 1: Querent
• Card 2: Air: guidance to support the path of bringing ideas into fruition
• Card 3: Water: guidance from the emotional realm which can help to heal and soothe
• Card 4: Fire: guidance from the spiritual realm to activate and energize
• Card 5: Earth: guidance from the material realm to help and manifest