Temperance · La Tempérance

Pamela Colman Smith drew the fourteenth trump as a physics problem. A winged figure in a white robe stands at the edge of a blue pool, one bare foot in the water, the other on the green bank. The wings run red at the shoulder and dark blue through the feathers. A gold cup sits in each hand, and a blue ribbon of water crosses from the lip of the raised cup into the lower one, on a diagonal no liquid would keep. Nothing spills. A white square on the breast holds an orange triangle pointing up, a line of Hebrew letters above it. A gold disc, dotted at its center, sits on the brow; straight rays fan out behind the head. To the left, an ochre path climbs green hills to a gap between two low peaks, where a golden light burns. On the right, yellow irises open among tall reeds at the waterline.

The face stays down at the pour. Whatever attention this card has is spent there.

The alchemists claimed this one, and the Golden Dawn hands it to Sagittarius, fire under Jupiter. Tempering is the old word for what the cups are doing: two things that will not mix, held in exchange until they agree to be a third.

Upright, the reading is measure. A proportion that survives being used, a pace that can be held.

Reversed, the exchange stalls. The tradition speaks of a swing to one edge, all fire or all water, or a truce so diluted that nothing in it has character left. The remedy is already drawn in: the cups stay in the hands, the stream stays in the air.