Tarot card meanings · Major Arcana 14
What does Temperance mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Temperance upright means “Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation”, and reversed “Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood”.
Upright
Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
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.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 2
Where does Temperance fall in a reading?
Temperance belongs to the Major Arcana. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.
Ask one question. Draw three cards, and cast an I Ching hexagram beside them to see where East and West agree. Free.
Draw three cardsWaite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.