Temperance as a Birth Card

Temperance never arrives alone. If the eight digits of your birth date add to exactly 14, you have two cards, Temperance and then The Hierophant, because 1 + 4 makes 5. This is the only total that gives Temperance, since any larger total reduces past 14 to a single number. A birth on 2 January 2009 adds 0 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 9 to get 14. Temperance, then The Hierophant. The How to Find Your Birth Cards page shows the whole method.

Your life's archetype

You are here to mix. Your soul took on the job of the blender, the one who can take two things that seem to have nothing to do with each other and find the proportion in which they become something better than either. Fire and water, head and heart, the sensible and the wild. Most people pick a side. You were built to hold both.

I think of the Temperance person as the one who proves that a human being can contain a great deal without falling apart. People calm down around you. They see you holding your own contradictions with some grace and they start to think they might be allowed to hold theirs. The middle path is your home ground, and when it is walked with intent it is the hardest path of all.

Who you are

You have a feel for proportion. You know when something is too much and when it is not enough, in a recipe, a conversation or a life, and you adjust without fuss. You are moderate by nature and you are not drawn to extremes or to positions that push people away.

You are a peacemaker, and you keep finding yourself in the middle of other people's disagreements helping them find common ground. You have spent your life fitting together parts of yourself that once seemed to contradict each other. You are steady, and dramatic swings are rare in you. Your spiritual life probably borrows from several traditions and you see no problem with that. Balance, blending, harmony and wholeness are your themes.

The shadow

Water can be added until there is no taste left. The shadow of Temperance is blandness, a balance so complete that there is nothing to hold on to, no edge, no passion, no position. You can find it hard to decide anything when you can see the sense in every option, and hard to commit fully when commitment means closing a door.

There is a placating streak here, the habit of choosing peace over truth and watering your own view down until it suits everyone and nobody. There is also stagnation, the comfort of a balance so hard won that you resist any change that might wobble it. And there is a quiet manipulation that can creep in, the calm person who steers the room without anyone noticing they are being steered. Watch for the middle path that is really a dodge. Some principles are not meant to be averaged.

In love and at work

In love you are steady, understanding and very good in a disagreement, which is a rarer quality than it sounds. The difficulty is when a relationship needs you to take a clear stand or to challenge a partner's behaviour, and your instinct is to look for the compromise instead. Your best match values your calm and does not expect you to perform a passion that is not in your nature.

At work you belong where different pieces have to be brought together: mediation, coordination, coaching, any role where your job is to help people with different views work as one. The satisfaction comes when you make something whole out of parts that were pulling in opposite directions.

What you are here to learn

That balance is not the absence of discomfort. The great lesson of this card is that real peace sometimes means planting your feet and refusing to move, and that there are moments when the fair thing and the comfortable thing are not the same. Your gift for seeing every side only becomes wisdom when it leads to deeper understanding rather than a shrug.

You are also learning that wholeness includes the parts that will not blend, the shadow pieces that have to be faced head on rather than stirred into the mix. Your peacemaking serves best when it is rooted in something you actually believe, rather than in a wish to avoid trouble. The growth comes when you can keep your balance while holding firm commitments, hold complexity without losing your integrity, and let your calm flow from being in the right place rather than from staying out of the way.

The cards that share your number

Temperance shares its number with The Hierophant, card 5, because 1 + 4 makes 5. This is a two card constellation, and if you landed on 14 you always have both.

I read the pair as the mixing and the teaching. Temperance finds the blend; The Hierophant turns the blend into something that can be passed on, a method, a tradition, a way of doing things that outlasts the person who found it. People with this pair are often the ones who quietly become the teacher of a group without ever having asked for the job. A total that lands straight on 5, or on 23, 32 or 41 and then 5, gives The Hierophant alone.

The cards either side

Temperance sits between Death, card 13, and The Devil, card 15. Death is the ending that leaves you with a new set of ingredients, and The Devil is the appetite and shadow that have to be given a place in the mix rather than left outside the door. Temperance between them is the pouring, the steady hand that finds a new balance after loss.

Across the traditions

Temperance has its own page in The 78 Cards, which reads it as a card in a spread. The 14 reduces to 5, so the Number 5 page in the Numerology section is the number page for this card, and it will read differently, because the Life Path reduces the day, month and year separately while the birth card adds the whole date as one string. The two systems count differently on purpose and tell you different things.

In Western astrology Temperance belongs to Sagittarius, the archer, and the Sagittarius page tells you about the sign. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter and it wants the far horizon and the big picture, which is exactly what the angel needs to see both cups at once.

Where in your life are you pouring water into the wine until nobody can taste it, and what would it cost to let one cup stay strong?

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Hierophant as a Birth Card