Temperance

Quick answer

The core meaning of Temperance is The alchemy and harmonizing of energies. Upright, it usually points to Balance, moderation, blending, patience. Symbolizes harmonizing opposing element; reversed, it may suggest Imbalance, extremes, excess, impatience. May indicate emotional turbulence, or l.

Card imagery

An angel stands with one foot in the water and one on the shore. She holds two cups, miraculously pouring water between them at an angle without spilling a drop. A square-and-triangle emblem marks her chest, and a path leads toward the sun in the background.

Upright meaning

Balance, moderation, blending, patience. Symbolizes harmonizing opposing elements, finding the middle path, and creating something new through an almost alchemical fusion.

Reversed meaning

Imbalance, extremes, excess, impatience. May indicate emotional turbulence, or losing your point of equilibrium in a relationship or situation.

Love, Career, Money, and Growth

Love

In love, Temperance points to The alchemy and harmonizing of energies. Read it back against how the relationship actually behaves and what you are both choosing.

Career

In career matters, Temperance points to The alchemy and harmonizing of energies. Start by working out which resources you control and what your next move is.

Money

In money matters, Temperance points to The alchemy and harmonizing of energies. Do not treat a symbolic reading as an investment conclusion — go by facts, budget and your own risk tolerance.

Personal growth

For personal growth, Temperance points to The alchemy and harmonizing of energies. Write down the question it raises, then turn that into an action you can actually check.

Yes or No

Upright

Yes

Reversed

No

This is our own quick read, based on which way the card’s meaning leans. Traditions disagree about individual cards, and a “Maybe” needs to be weighed against the position in the spread and your actual situation rather than taken as a one-word answer.

Waite’s Original Text (1911)

Inner Symbolism (original)

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 harmonizes the psychic and material natures. Under that rule we know in our rational part something of whence we came and whither we are going.

Original Upright Meaning

Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.

Original Reversed Meaning

Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even the priest who will marry the Querent; also disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.

Quoted from A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The text is in the public domain.

Myth and symbol origins

Pouring liquid between two vessels simply is the standard way of drawing the virtue Temperance. No detour through Greek myth is required.

Documented imagery

Attested by surviving objects or texts

The act of pouring is Temperance itself

Temperance (Temperantia) is one of the four cardinal virtues, and the fixed medieval personification is a woman pouring liquid between two vessels, the reference being the ancient practice of cutting wine with water — not drinking it neat is the everyday model of temperance. The central gesture of this card is nothing else: it is a literal illustration of the word. Taken together with Strength (Fortitude) and Justice, this deck holds three of the cardinal virtues; only Prudence is missing.

Source The classical four cardinal virtues; the water-mixing scheme in medieval personifications of Temperantia

Esoteric correspondence

A sourced traditional claim, but constructed inside an occult system

Waite's figure is neither male nor female

Waite writes: the sign of the sun on the forehead, on the breast "the square and triangle of the septenary," one foot on land and one in the water. He makes a point of declaring that he calls the figure he, "but the figure is neither male nor female," rejects the claim that it symbolises the genius of the sun, and says the name Temperance is applied "fantastically" — because what it is actually doing is tempering the two natures, spirit and matter.

Source Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, Temperance (compare the original in the source panel on this page)

Sagittarius and the road going up

The Golden Dawn assigns Temperance to Sagittarius (Hebrew letter Samekh). The path on the card running straight to distant hills with a light above them agrees with the Sagittarian sense of shooting toward something far off. This is a result of system design, not the origin of the imagery.

Source Golden Dawn Book T zodiacal attributions

Modern reading

Popular only since the twentieth century; unrelated to where the card came from

Iris and Ganymede: a modern identification

Because the card shows a winged figure pouring water, people often attach it to Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, or to Ganymede, the cupbearer of the gods who belongs to Aquarius. Both are real figures in Greek myth, but neither has any line of descent to the water-mixing scheme of the virtue Temperance — in the history of the imagery, the act of pouring was the marker of a virtue first, and only later got identified by later readers as some deity.

Source Modern popular reading; Iris and Ganymede are figures of Greek myth

Written by BESTAROT, not quoted from historical sources. Each claim is tagged by how well it is evidenced; modern interpretive layers are useful for reading, but they are not the card’s historical origin.

Study the theme: Myth and Symbol Origins (Academy chapter 6)