14. Temperance
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Welcome to Soulchology’s worksheets, your starter-kit into an intuitive self-enquiry using tarot and astrology. I write these in my usual dry humour, which reflects the tone of my sessions too, because learning is intense enough without stripping it of humanity. A little wit makes the wisdom easier to digest!
Anyway, while full sessions include numerology, Lenormand, and therapeutic layers, these worksheets are your solo starter kit designed to get you going without frying your nervous system.
Grab your deck, take a breath and don’t overthink it. No altar required. You can read these on your lap, mid-commute, or in bed with questionable lighting. If you know current transits, great, add them in. If not, the cards still work because they’re generous like that.
And, if you shuffle really fast, they love to fling out like you’re live in an episode of Ghosts and Trevor is standing next to you.
Each sheet prompts you to connect the cards with your real life, that is, not your aspirational, one-day-when-I-journal-daily life. Pay attention to the artwork, colours, symbols, and emotional tone because tarot is layered, not linear. Study only what leaps out, don’t go looking for clues.
This isn’t about mystical perfection, it’s about noticing yourself. Your thoughts, your choices, your patterns. If you’re new to tarot and feeling twitchy about it, you might want to read my piece on Substack that gently dismantles the pressure.
My advice is to pull (or fling) your card at the end of the day, not first thing. That way, you’re reflecting and not pre-loading your brain with vague forecasts. It’s a faster way to build intuitive confidence and a more honest way to learn what the cards actually mean to you.
i. The Nutshell
Upright
Temperance is integration school, and you’re the main experiment. This card recalibrates, which is a polite way of saying: get your extremes talking to each other. Temperance is often mistaken for beige-coloured mildness, but it’s actually a kind of spiritual chemistry because you’re alchemising. Ruled by Sagittarius, Temperance is balance before a non-linear, gold-making process. And here’s a not-in-the-guidebook observation: this card often arrives after a major emotional detonation (see: Tower, Death), like a cosmic barista making a soothing blend by hand after the espresso machine exploded. It’s here to help you integrate what just happened so you don’t go full pendulum swing in response. Temperance wants you to slow down, re-centre, and build a life that doesn’t need constant rescuing. It’s the daily, sustainable commitment to harmony over high drama.
Keywords: Integration, balance, moderation, healing, flow, harmony.
Translation: You don’t need a whole new life. You need a better recipe for the one you’ve got.
Reversed
When Temperance shows up reversed, it’s often because you’re blending oil and water and wondering why it still tastes off. It’s imbalance-central; too much giving, too much taking, too much effort, too much avoidance. Maybe you’re lurching between extremes, using crisis as momentum. This card reversed suggests you’re either over-correcting or refusing to course-correct at all. Maybe you’re trying to fix something that needs to be felt. Or maybe you’re avoiding integration because you’re afraid you’ll lose your edge. But here’s the thing: real balance channels your intensity, it doesn't neuter it.
Sagittarius in shadow can go from wise philosopher to impulsive preacher. You might be dogmatic about your “truth,” rejecting nuance, or missing how your inner conflicts are leaking or projecting into or onto everything else. Temperance reversed encourages you to pause and consider what it means to find balance by truly feeling it, rather than just going through the motions.
Keywords: Imbalance, excess, avoidance, disconnection, resistance to flow.
Translation: The blend’s off. Stir gently. Add presence.
ii. Illus-traits
A quick glance at Temperance’s symbolic traits in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. What’s mixing, harmonising, or asking you to breathe and… argh!… trust the process?
One Foot on Land, One in Water – Bridging the conscious and unconscious. A reminder that balance is responsive. You’re allowed to recalibrate as needed.
Pouring Between Cups – The natural recycling and integration system. Emotions, thoughts, and past hurts can be changed into something new.
The Triangle in the Square – Spirit’s fire within form and divine alignment. Your higher self doing time inside a human body.
Golden Path and Distant Crown – The long game. You’re being asked to zoom out. This is less about immediate payoff and more about long-haul integration.
Wings of the Angel – Higher guidance on grounded matters. Be present instead of avoiding.
Iris Flowers – Hope, messages and beauty at the edge of the scene. Symbol of divine communication and the emotional intelligence blossoming in quiet places.
iii. Influences
Planetary:
Temperance is ruled by Jupiter, the philosophical expander, life coach of the solar system, and eternal optimist with a passport full of spiritual stamps. Jupiter’s influence is about meaning. What have your recent experiences taught you? Can you look at the big picture without getting lost in details? Jupiter updates your lens to panoramic and dilates your worldview. The question it asks: how can your integration serve not only you, but others too?
Natal House(s):
Temperance resonates with the Ninth House, the zone of higher learning, long-distance journeys (both literal and existential), and the beliefs that shape your choices. This house wants the questions refined. What are you aiming for now, and is it based on an old map and beliefs? Its opposite, the Third House, keeps things local and immediate. Together they say: integrate the internal and the external, the belief and the practice, the theory and the lived experience.
Astrological Sign(s):
Temperance is aligned with Sagittarius, the seeker, the philosopher-archer with one foot on the ground and the other in the stars. Sagittarius wants to know everything but preferably in one giant swoop, which Temperance gently vetoes in favour of paced wisdom. Across the wheel, Gemini offers the reminder that questions are powerful, but without integration, they become noise. So the inquiry becomes: are your beliefs balanced enough to walk the talk or are you spiritually over-caffeinated?
Numerologically:
Temperance is Fourteen, which reduces to Five. Fourteen is a pivot point and somewhere between the downright nuts - and harmony, with awareness and action in tow. It carries the tension of change and the promise of finesse. Five asks: where is the freedom in all this? Together, they ask: transformation without integration is just a plot twist. Temperance says: let’s get grounded before you go chasing clarity across another continent… or another coping mechanism.
Element – Fire:
Fire here is the slow burn, not wildfire. It’s the sacred flame that warms rather than scorches. Temperance asks you to tend this inner fire with patience; to cook your life like a stew rather than flash-frying it for speed. Fire rules willpower, passion and purpose. But when it burns too hot, you lose centre. This is fire that listens. Where in your life could a gentler heat yield more growth?
iv. A Day in the Life of Temperance
Well That Escalated Quickly
You’re either spiritually bypassing with sparkly affirmations or drowning in emotional soup with no exit strategy. You ping between extremes like a metronome having a breakdown; first you’re all “go with the flow,” then you’re rage-texting someone for not reading your vibes correctly. Balance feels impossible, so you over-correct. You try to fix ‘the nuts’ with control, and control with more nuts, without ever asking what you're actually feeling. Moderation? Never met her.
Adjusting the Knobs
You’re trying to find your centre, but the pendulum keeps swinging. One day it’s herbal tea and yoga, the next it’s rage-cleaning and online shopping in a mild dissociative haze. You’re aware that you need more balance, but it still feels theoretical, like something you’ll master once life stops being so life-y. You're blending some things and compartmentalising others, and it's sort of working... and sort of doesn’t.
Unsubscribed from Self-Sabotage
You’re in the groove. You’re recognising emotional triggers without letting them drag you by the ankles. You pause before reacting, breathe before replying, and accept that contradictions can coexist. You’ve got one eye on your long-term vision and the other on your current bandwidth. You’re showing up with presence instead of perfection, and that’s bringing a surprising kind of peace.
Writing the TED Talk
You’re the human embodiment of a deep exhale. You’re living the integration, taking your pain and turning it into perspective, and your emotions into clarity. You’re not pretending to be neutral, you’re just not ruled by the extremes. You’re balancing discipline with compassion, action with patience, and finding out that equilibrium is powerful.
v. Working with these Energies
Living Temperance with Integrity and a Bit of Alchemy
This archetype is the great blender of opposites, the mediator of extremes, and the recall that not every impulse deserves airtime. Temperance shows up with a toolkit and asks what needs harmonising. It teaches that healing is about integrating what was disowned, diluted or distorted. This card wants you to stop swinging between all-or-nothing and start honouring the space in between. Let Temperance remind you that true alignment is sustainable.
Track the extremes
– Where do you go from zero to ninety emotionally or energetically?
– What old belief says you need to choose between calm and passion, rest and drive, self-care and ambition?
– What’s the cost of not regulating these inner swings?Blend your contradictions
– Where do two parts of you want different things... and could both be valid?
– What might it look like to make room for paradox rather than pick a side?
– Are you confusing conflict with inconsistency?Practice paced clarity
– Can you move slower without assuming you’re falling behind?
– What would it look like to process rather than perform?
– Where are you forcing resolution when the insight needs to simmer?Ground the vision
– What’s the bigger picture you’re aiming for, and does your daily life support it?
– Where are you chasing “spiritual” ideals while ignoring basic needs?
– What small, sustainable step would embody your values today?Let integration take the lead
– What lesson should we experience instead of just knowing?
– How are you processing your experiences instead of just getting through them?
– What if balance isn’t a set destination, but an ongoing practice?
vi. Building Skills
Pain as Compass, Values as Catalyst
Temperance asks us to rise above being competitive and to tend to the fire and the water by bringing together opposing elements of ourselves into respectful conversation. This is emotional alchemy: honouring what hurts while asking what it reveals. Often, the painful beliefs we carry about ourselves aren’t random because they guard something meaningful. Vulnerability, when approached mindfully, can point directly to what we care about most.
Consider this:
Pause and bring to mind a painful judgment you have about yourself. Maybe it’s the voice that says you’re not enough, too much, or never quite right. Now ask: Why does this matter to me? What value is buried beneath this hurt? Perhaps your fear of being “too sensitive” reveals how deeply you care. Maybe feeling “not smart enough” comes from valuing growth and understanding.
Hold that awareness gently. Ask: What’s on the other side of this pain?
This reflection invites Temperance in to hold space for both the ache and the aspiration it reveals. It’s this quiet merging that transforms inner conflict into clarity and self-judgment into self-respect. That’s the alchemy: not correcting yourself, but integrating all your parts until they speak the same language.
vii. Embodiment
Alchemy Isn’t Just a Metaphor
Temperance doesn’t rush. It’s a slow magic within every element of our being, not a to-do list. When this archetype moves through you, it’s not about becoming someone new overnight. It’s about recalibrating until everything fits better. Think of it less as a makeover and more as an internal rebalancing that changes how you feel in your skin. Here’s how to embody Temperance today:
Smell:
What does emotional equilibrium smell like? It’s not incense or lavender-soaked clichés. It’s something cleaner like mountain air after rain, the steam from herbal tea, or the steady, neutral scent of something simmering slowly on the stove. It smells like the calm you didn’t have to force.
Body:
Where do you swing too far to one side? Maybe your throat clenches before you speak or you get a sudden headache. Temperance asks you to notice where your body tries to protect you by going too hard or too numb. Try this: soften your jaw, roll your neck, exhale longer than you inhale. This is the language of nervous system negotiation. Speak it fluently.
Soundtrack:
What music helps you feel stitched together instead of pulled apart? Pick a song that combines dark tones with uplifting lyrics or rhythmic beats that ground you without dulling your senses. Temperance vibes with the middle path between melancholy and momentum.
Action:
What would it look like to choose the middle path today? Can you pause before reacting, blend logic with emotion, or let two truths sit side by side without needing one to win? This card takes practice until the integration clicks.
Nature cue:
Go outside and find something that’s balancing itself. A river smoothing stone. A branch that bends without breaking. A horizon line where sky and land meet without clashing. Nature holds opposites all the time without losing its shape. So can you.
Notice what steadies you:
Temperance is a daily devotion to what keeps you intact. Where are you rushing when you need to blend? Where are you separating things that could be stirred? Let this card remind you: you’re not meant to split yourself down the middle just to stay functional.
viii. Your Impressions
Examine the Temperance card in your deck, even if you often overlook it as just the calm one. There’s more going on beneath its peaceful appearance; this card is working hard in a transformative way.
Where does your eye land first? The angel? The two cups mid-pour? One foot on land, the other in water? The distant path to the sun? That weird triangle inside a square on the chest (fellow geometry enthusiasts assemble here)? Notice what draws you in. Is it the blending? The balance? Or the sense that something subtle but massive is happening under the hood?
Scan your body. Are you breathing fully? Do you feel calm or uneasy, as if waiting when you want action? This struggle reveals insight. Patience encourages repeated attempts until it feels right for now. Remember this will take time, and that’s okay.
If Temperance could talk, it wouldn’t say, “Be still.” It would say, “Keep moving, but gently.” If it’s next to Death in your reading, see this as a moment of change: What do you need to address before moving forward? What part of you is rushing when you should be blending and integrating? Notice how this card is annoyingly wise, like a friend who always makes tea at the right moment and says something calming that interrupts your worries.
ix. Intuitive Meaning
Explore what Temperance means to you as a lived experience. Reflect on moments when you balanced extremes and remained mindful. This energy embodies slow synthesis; transforming without destruction. It’s the art of adjusting, testing and tempering.
When have you surprised yourself by being the calm one because you’d integrated what once overwhelmed you?
Where are you still trying to force things to happen instead of letting them unfold?
What would it look like to stop choosing sides and start mixing the best of both?
Applied insight with a three-card reading using Temperance as your anchor:
Where am I being asked to blend, not choose?
What imbalance am I ready to recalibrate?
What part of me is learning to integrate, not eliminate?
Pull or shuffle-launch your cards. Let the spread reveal what’s fermenting beneath the surface, what harmony wants to be handcrafted. Remember: Temperance isn’t about getting it perfect. It’s about trusting that a little of this and a little of that when mixed with care, can create something far more powerful than either elements alone.
Write your own Keywords
Write three words that echo your lived experience of the Temperance card:
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x. Closing Reflection: Track Your Evolving Lens
Your relationship with each card will grow over time because it’s meant to shaped by your life. Consider the prompts below to revisit and reflect.
What I thought this card meant when I first pulled it: —————————————————
A recent experience that changed how I see it: —————————————————
How I feel about it now, in my body or life: —————————————————
What surprised me as this card kept showing up: —————————————————
One way this card is living in my life right now: —————————————————
If this card visited me today as a guide, what would it want me to remember? —————————————————
Revisit these after a week, a moon phase, or a meaningful moment. Let the card evolve as you do.
If you feel a quiet sense of recognition, curiosity and want to explore it, browse the sessions page for what feels right.