Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
It seems that, in spite of its appearance in an earlier article (Symbolic Alchemy — A view of The Lovers and Art), Temperance has been tapping me lightly on the shoulder for a few weeks, each time I come to choose a card to study in the major arcana. So I shall ignore it no longer. It feels fitting that today it has its own stage, and with slightly different lighting which should throw up a few more angles.
Both of the cards here — from the Rider-Waite Smith and Xultun Tarot decks, respectively — express the idea of Temperance quite similarly, their different styles notwithstanding. Both of them give me a sense of gentle calmness, of focus and forbearance. I find them very peaceful to look at. Here, between the endings of Death and before the onslaught of energy from The Devil, lies the middle path.
Let’s look at each card and see if we can get a better idea of just what it is to tread this middle path.
Temperance – Rider-Waite Smith
An angel stands in the foreground, clothed in white, its wings outstretched, their tips disappearing off either side of the card. In contrast to the robe, the wings are a deep, blood red. There is a skin-coloured triangle over the angel’s heart, which I take to be a hole rather than appliquéd material, which would make sense: the heart of the angel takes on the form of flesh. Both wings and triangle demonstrate the melding of spirit and matter, held, images of physicality that they are, in the form of a creature that is otherwise viewed as heavenly.
A golden disc with a single dot sits above the angel’s face, as yellow as its hair, and its head radiates light, mirroring the Sun that sits above a distant blue mountain range. In each hand it holds a cup, one slightly raised, linked by a ribbon of water. One of its feet rests lightly on a green bank; the other is submerged in the water, which is clear and calm. To its left grow two yellow flowers — perhaps irises — which reflect the formation of the cups. All of these images to me convey the same idea in different ways: body and soul; the visceral and the transcendent; below and above. And here there is a smooth, continuous, balanced flow between each, denoted by the double stream of water that passes from cup to cup.
The angel is focussed on its hands, but its expression is of calm contemplation rather than frowning concentration. This is meditation rather than manipulation. It is a process of allowing, while holding the balance between the earth and the heavens. The term “state of grace” comes to me here, where “grace” refers to the expression of a form of beingness: one has to be necessarily graceful in order to walk that middle line without faltering or wobbling, resisting the urge to dance off one way or the other.