Temperance

XIV Temperence

Sagittarius

Patience, Moderation, Good management, Combining forces

When Temperance arrives in a reading, it is often to bring the lesson of moderation and balance into your life. It indicates that there are several different, sometimes conflicting, extremes in your life, which are useless to you on their own. These various elements, must instead be brought together into one place, melted down in a great cauldron, and shaped into something new and better.

Often, Temperance indicates the need to take the middle road, avoiding extremes and finding a balance between them finding the common ground. In a work or career reading, for instance, it might be that you need to find the common ground between yourself and a colleague with whom you are in conflict, or the middle way between a tried and trusted

method and a new, innovative one. Temperance advises them to take the best bits of both, discard the bad bits, and thus create something more effective.

It can also represent testing a method or idea through rigorous application of extremes, thus strengthening it. Temperance is the card of eclecticism in all areas of life. Spiritually, it represents drawing on several different belief systems to find the best of all of them which suits you. With regard to creativity, it brings with it an inundation of different influences for you to create from; most importantly, it suggests an eclecticism of skills, talents, and passions, which, on their own, might not seem like much to you, but when united together create something far greater and more useful. You should look to how you can combine your various skills and talents, rather than viewing them in isolation.

This card can indicate a need for adaptation; you will be required to “go with the flow” in relation to life changes, coordinating various parts of your life toward a more unified goal, whilst moderating them so that a single part does not become more important.

There is a suggestion of balance and even-handedness required in your ife, with you juggling many different things and giving equal weight to all of them. In a social situation, Temperance suggests that a given group of people is a melting pot of various ideas, beliefs, skills, styles, and personalities that might seem to clash at first, but which actually work great as a team, each person bringing something unique to the table.

Keywords: Moderation, tempering, balance, flux, common ground, unity, synthesis, alchemy, milieu, creativity, eclecticism, melting pot, equal weight, adaptation, flow, the middle way.

Finance/Career: Care in matters of investment, feeling constricted in present condition. Desire to change jobs. Need to consult before acting. Blending elements into a workable formula or solution.

Love/Relationships: In a relationship reading, you are both quite different but together you bring out something quite unique and special. Temperance really comes as a blessing. It is a higher form of the Lovers, and thus brings not only unity between a couple, but also fruit being born from that union. Whilst this may indicate a child, it can also indicate a couple that work together to create things, each one using their own set of skills toward the goal. It represents a tremendously creative partnership, so that there is much more to the relationship than romance and love.