La Temperanza/Temperance

Even though Temperance eventually acquired angel’s wings, Temperance is actually the most down-to-earth of the virtues. As described by Aristotle and Plato, Temperance is the virtue that regulates the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, notably food, drink, and sex. Temperate people enjoy these pleasures in moderation, while people in the grips of its companion vice, Gluttony, over-indulge to the point of harming their health or reputation.

Temperance has a standard image in Renaissance and later art, a seated or standing woman diluting wine with water by pouring the liquids from one container to another. Until the 19^th century, overly-strong wine often had to be tempered with water before serving it. Crude harvesting and fermenting practices could produce wine with excessive alcohol, sugar, or tannin, making the wine undrinkable until it was diluted.

These well-known depictions of Temperance were painted on wooden panels in the mid-15^th century. The liquid, flowing at an angle that defies the laws of physics, hints that the scene is other-worldly and allegorical. The women focus calmly and intently on their task, and pour with a steady hand. The figure on the left by Pesellino wears the scalloped halo that signifies an allegorical figure in Florentine art. She holds two identical undecorated jars. The man at her feet, Scipio Africanus, exemplifies the virtue of Temperance. The richly dressed woman with the fashionable hairdo painted by Pollaiuolo pours liquid from an elaborate pot into a jewel encrusted basin resting on her knee.

The earliest Tarot cards are very similar to these traditional renderings of Temperance.

The hand painted Charles VI deck (left) is very similar to the Pesellino painting above. Liquid flows at an impossible angle between two undecorated earthenware pots. This figure has the same scalloped halo that denotes an allegorical figure. The block-printed Rosenwald card (center), is nearly identical to the Charles VI card. The Visconti-Sforza card (right) was painted in Venice or Florence in the 1470s to complete the partial deck originally created in the 1450s. The figure’s braids and rolled down stockings may indicate she’s a serving maid holding identical Majolica containers.

The French Temperance Card

When Tarot arrived in France shortly after 1500, card imagery began to drift away from Italian prototypes. The Tarot de Marseille pattern that emerged in the early 17^th century gave us the Temperance card that remains virtually unchanged up to the present day. A woman stands with her body in a contrapposto S curve, her feet hidden under her robe.  A small circle in the center of her forehead at the hairline is often rendered as a red flower.  Angel wings set her apart from earlier Italian cards, and may associate her with Archangel Michael. On the left is one of the oldest Tarot de Marseille type I cards, the Dodal printed in Lyon in 1701. Next to it is the Swiss J. Burdel deck printed a century later, in 1813.

Temperance in the Trump Sequence

In some Italian tarot decks of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the virtues were grouped together after the Pope and next to the Chariot and Lovers cards.  This tradition continued in later centuries with Tarocchino and Minchiate decks that were not influenced by the Tarot de Marseille.  Since Temperance is about striving to be balanced and moderate in everyday life, it makes sense to place this card among real people dealing with real struggles, as depicted in the first seven cards of the trump series. The designer of the Tarot de Marseille deck treated the virtues very differently. He spaced them evenly, with two cards separating each of them, in positions 8, 11 and 14. This places Temperance between Death and the Devil.

We don’t know the deck creator’s intention, but there are various theories as to why an angel appears between the darkest cards of the deck. The angel might be a guide, or your own spiritual essence, that you meet in the next world. Or it could be a healing presence, mixing an elixir to help you deal with your trip through the darkness. Since this card follows the Death card, and triumphs over it, it may represent the Archangel Michael who greets the souls of the dead at the gates of heaven. The Angel and the Devil are a duality, with the Devil representing Temperance’s opposite—gluttony and addiction.
(The theory of co-author Iolon can be found at this link.)

Temperance as Fame

In the Vievil and Rouën-Brussels tarot pattern, the Temperance angel is associated with the Triumph of Fame. Its pairing with Death may be inspired by Petrarch.

A different type of Temperance card, where a woman pours water into a bowl placed on the ground, was popular in northern France and Belgium for about one hundred years. This image first appeared in the Vievil Tarot (left), produced in Paris about 1650. The Vandenborre Tarot (right) is a typical example of the 18^th-century Rouën-Brussels pattern.

The woman on the Temperance card wears a crown and holds a scepter symbolizing high status and rulership. The ribbon floating near her head reads Fama Sol, “Fame Alone”, a reference to a poem by Matteo Boiardo that starts, “Dopo la morte sol fama n’avanza…” (After death only fame advances…).

Petrarch may have been the inspiration for placing the Temperance card as Fame immediately after Death. Tarot trump cards are a type of triumphal parade, where each float in the parade triumphs over the ones that follow it. Petrarch’s poem, I Trionfi, is the seminal triumphal parade in Italian literature. Fame triumphs over Death in Petrarch’s parade sequence, because your name and reputation live on after you, giving you immortality as long as you are remembered.

Traditional Temperance Card Meanings

Restraint and moderation are the key meanings of this card.  Temperance advises us to restrain overly-strong emotions like anger or lust. The card can describe a return to good health after a period of imbalance. It advises balancing any dualities in our nature, such as body and soul, or intellect and emotion. The card depicts the type of skillful and impeccable action necessary to pour liquid into a container from a distance without spilling it. We should strive to perform our daily tasks with the same care and deliberation in order to minimize foolish mistakes.

Occult Tarot

The tarot deck created by Arthur E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith is the culmination of 150 years of occultist thinking about this card. Eliphas Levi described the Temperance card in his book Transcendental Magic, a foundational work in western esotericism. Waite’s design follows Levi’s description closely.

Levi describes the figure on the card as “an angel with the sign of the sun upon her forehead, and on the breast the square and triangle of the septenary, pours from one chalice into another the two essences which compose the Elixir of Life.” Waite’s angel has the astrological symbol for the Sun on its head.  Waite explains that the triangle in the square symbolizes fire dwelling within purified earth.  For Levi, the three-sided triangle and four-sided square have a numerical value of seven, the number of the hermaphrodite, which is evidently how he saw the angel.

French occultists assigned the Hebrew letter Nun to this card. Speaking of nun, Levi said, “the heaven of the Sun, climates, motion, changes of life, which is ever new yet ever the same.” As the angel pours a liquid from one jar to another, the hands constantly rotate, making a circular motion that imitates the cycle of seasons rotating regularly through the years. Nun also means offspring or fruit, which suggests that combining the contents of the two cups is an alchemical act that will create an entirely new third substance.

In Waite’s card, the angel stands with one foot in water and one on land, emphasizing the polarity of the contents of the cups. A healing elixir, much like the alchemist’s philosopher stone, is the third substance that will arise from combining the contents of the two of cups.  This goes far beyond the original concept of diluting one liquid by another, where no new third substance is created.

Waite associated this card with the Archangel Michael, God’s warrior, who doesn’t seem like a very temperate figure.  When the Golden Dawn reassigned Hebrew letters to the cards, Samekh was assigned to Temperance. This letter is associated with Sagittarius, which also doesn’t seem to relate to Temperance, unless you consider how the centaur combines human and animal natures. The irises in Waite’s card refer to the goddess Iris, the messenger of the gods, whose symbol is the rainbow that spans the spiritual and material worlds.

Modern Temperance Card Meanings

This card describes someone who remains calm and centered while everyone around them is frantic and stressed. A temperate person has a balanced, moderate lifestyle with a sensible diet, regular routines and minimal emotional drama. It may also describe someone who vacillates between options, unable to make up their mind. This could also describe a meditative, inner-focused individual.

Modern Temperance Cards

In the Tarot of the Crone, a mysterious figure walks a narrow green path between fire and ice, touching the raw elements in all their power.  This individual doesn’t need energy that’s tempered and watered down; nor are they overwhelmed and knocked off-balance by the power of these elements. They use the power consciously, in just the right amount, to create their own destiny.

The Pirate’s Tarot takes us back to the original concept of this card.  A barmaid pours water into a barrel of rum to temper its strength.  Perhaps she read the Greek classics, where Xenephon says that wine tempered with water makes people happy, sociable, and mentally sharp. But when the wine is too strong, people get into fights and do stupid things. (I’m paraphrasing a bit).  The wise barmaid is doing what she can to temper the rowdiness of her pirate customers.

It might seem that temperance leads to a life of boring mediocrity, regular habits, and never having much fun.  But philosophers tell us that staying centered and aware as we walk the middle path allows us to choose our reactions to events. If we just ricochet from one situation to the next like a ping-pong ball, having emotional meltdowns when we get overwhelmed, we lose control of our future. With a dose of temperance, we can evaluate reality with clarity and make choices that support our long-range goals, rather than sabotaging them with impetuous acts.

See more cards and art at https://www.tarotwheel.net/history/the%20individual%20trump%20cards/la%20temperantia.html

Trumps History Home

Illustrations

• Temperance. From the website of Saint Aelred Catholic Church. org.
• Allegory of Temperance. Francesco Pesellino, mid-15^th century, Florence. From a cassone panel of the Seven Virtues. Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art.
• Temperance, Piero del Pollaiuolo, late 15^th From a panel painting of the Seven Virtues. Collection of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
• Charles VI Tarocchi, c. 1450, recreated by Marco Benedetti, 2020. Collection of Bibliothèque Nationale Française, Paris.
• Rosenwald Tarot, c. 1475. Re-created by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, 2017. Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
• Jean Dodal Tarot, Lyon, c. 1710. Collection of the British Museum.
• Jacques Burdel Tarot, Fribourg, 1813. Facsimile by Yves Reynaud, 2019.
• François Heri Tarot, Solothurn Switzerland, 1730. Facsimile by Yves Reynaud, 2020.
• Tarot de Jacques Vieville, Paris, mid-17^th Facsimile by Heron Boechat, Bordeaux, c. 1980. Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française.
• Vandenborre Bacchus Tarot, 1762. Carta Mundi/US Games Systems, 1983.
• The Centennial Waite Smith Tarot Deck. London, 1909. U.S. Games System, Inc., Stamford, CT, 2009.
• Tarot of the Crone. Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. Arnell’s Art, 2017
• Pirates Tarot. Bepe Vigna. Lo Scarabeo, 2007.

References

Michael S. Howard:  The Tarot Trumps, Some History, from Christian Beginnings to the Esotericists and C. G. Jung: Temperance (tarotchristianbasis.blogspot.com)

Michael J. Hurst:  http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2008/04/moral-virtues.html

See the separate Bibliography for books that discuss all the trump cards.