06/18/2026
Temperance can sound like something out of a Prohibition era pamphlet…something urging us to be moderate, to take the middle ground, to be not too much of one thing or another…all of which can sound boring and ineffective in a world that is suffering.
A deeper reading of the card shows that the angel is engaging in an act that should be impossible. The liquid in the cup should be spilling but isn’t. The angel is showing us what we are capable of doing when we mix the alchemy of our daily lives to create something magical or miraculous. To temper means to mix. I like Thoreau’s quote as a reminder that we can disrupt the world when it feels too machine like, too harsh and cold. We can engage with the machine without becoming machine like. The card comes after Death in the major arcana, and as Amanda Yates Garcia says…after death, things get weird. We can more fully engage our healing powers when we have come through something difficult. We know that friction is what produces a pearl. Temperance asks us to be open to ways we can interrupt the machine to create healing in a world that wants to churn out cruelty and corruption.
