Temperance Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

An angel stands with one foot on the bank and one in the water, pouring between two cups at an angle that shouldn’t work. Water crosses the gap anyway, uphill, in a thin unbroken line.

Most people meet this card in the long middle, well after the crisis and well before anybody would call it recovered.

Welcome to the fifteenth entry in my tarot glossary.

The Fool leapt, The Magician built, The High Priestess listened, The Empress grew, The Emperor framed it, The Hierophant taught it, The Lovers chose, The Chariot drove, Strength gentled the lion, The Hermit went quiet, the Wheel turned, Justice weighed it, The Hanged Man waited, Death closed the door, and now the tarot deck starts mixing.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what it means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish it, its planet, its zodiac sign, timing, whether it leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling it for clients.

Stay to the end to see what this card holds for anyone living with one foot in each world.

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What Does The Temperance Tarot Card Actually Mean?

Temperance is card fourteen of the Major Arcana, the recombination that follows an ending.

Fourteen comes directly after Death, which is no accident. Something finished, and this is the slow work of making a life out of what’s left.

Picture healing with no deadline attached to it.

One foot on land, one in the water

In the Rider Waite Smith image, a winged figure in a white robe stands at the edge of a pool, one foot planted on the bank and one submerged, tipping water between two golden cups.

Watch the stream between the cups. It travels at an angle no liquid would obey.

Something is being held in balance here that physics wouldn’t permit, which is the card admitting outright that this is a small miracle rather than a technique.

Temperance was one of the four cardinal virtues carried into early tarot, sitting alongside Justice and Fortitude as qualities a decent life required.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads it as the conscious and unconscious finally mixing, with neither one drowning the other.

What Are the Symbols on The Temperance Tarot Card?

Pamela Colman Smith put two of everything in this card, then made them cooperate.

Pairs run through the whole image, and the figure in the middle refuses to choose between any of them.

• The two cups: the central act of the card. Nothing is poured out and nothing is wasted, it simply moves between vessels.
• The impossible stream: water crossing upward between the cups. Balance here is sustained rather than natural, and worth the effort it takes.
• One foot on land, one in the water: the conscious world and the feeling world, occupied simultaneously. No need to leave either.
• The red wings: passion, fully present. Moderation is not the absence of fire in this card, it’s fire with a hand on the dial.
• The square with a triangle on the chest: spirit inside matter, the alchemical mark of something being refined rather than replaced.
• The solar disc on the brow: conscious awareness, the part of you that chooses the proportions.
• The yellow irises: named for the goddess of the rainbow, growing right where the water meets the ground.
• The narrow path to the mountains: the long route, visible and unhurried, leading somewhere specific.
• The crown of light between the peaks: the destination, glowing at the end of the path rather than anywhere nearby.

What Do the Colors on The Temperance Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does quiet work on the mind before a single meaning gets read.

Psychologists have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this palette is the most evenly weighted in the deck.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish Temperance?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either hold Temperance’s balance or tip it over.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is Temperance a Yes or No Card?

Yes, provided you don’t rush it.

Temperance answers in favour of anything built gradually, and against anything that needs to happen this week.

Her yes assumes a reasonable pace, a little compromise, plus a willingness to adjust the recipe as you go.

Reversed, the answer turns toward not like this, usually because something has been taken to an extreme.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

Speaking in glossary terms, though, this card leans toward a patient and fairly generous yes.

What Is Temperance’s Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under Temperance is gradual by design.

Jupiter is generous rather than quick, and a blend that gets hurried separates again.

Expect steady movement over months, with the result arriving properly mixed instead of early.

Gradual, and worth not rushing

Sagittarius season is the traditional window, roughly late November into December, with Jupiter’s long view behind it.

Fourteen is the other timing clue, showing up as fourteen days, fourteen weeks, or a full two weeks of a lunar cycle depending on the question.

When I see Temperance for timing, I read it as paced rather than scheduled.

Things arrive when the proportions are right, which is usually later than hoped and better than expected.

What Planet and Zodiac Sign Rule Temperance?

Temperance belongs to Sagittarius, which surprises people who expected a water sign.

Jupiter rules Sagittarius, and that’s the same planet behind the Wheel of Fortune, which explains why these two cards keep turning up in each other’s company.

Astrologers tracing the Sagittarius current through this card list Fire as its element, despite all that water in the imagery.

Fire is the thread tying it together, though it’s fire being carefully managed rather than fire let loose, which is the whole argument of the card.

If you carry strong Sagittarius placements, or a prominent Jupiter, Temperance may feel less like a stranger and more like a mirror.

Nurses, physiotherapists, mediators, winemakers, teachers, plus anybody rebuilding slowly after something took a long time to end, all live under this light.

There’s a fuller breakdown of Temperance and its link to Sagittarius, plus Jupiter if you want to go deeper.

What Does Temperance Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

Temperance is the steadiest love card in the tarot deck, which people sometimes read as lukewarm.

Here’s how it tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: a slow build that actually holds. Compatibility doing the work chemistry usually gets credit for.
• In love, in a relationship: repair after a rough patch, compromise landing well, two lives blending at a pace you can both live with.
• As feelings: warm, steady, unhurried feelings. Somebody taking it seriously enough to go slowly.
• As a person: calm, moderate, a healing presence, often a Sagittarius, frequently working in medicine, therapy, or the arts.
• As advice: mix rather than choose. The answer is probably both, in the right proportion.
• Reversed in love: hot then cold, overgiving then withdrawing, or impatience forcing a pace neither of you can hold.

What Temperance Teaches Anyone Living With One Foot in Each World

Here’s what this card means when it turns up for someone on the other side of a live reading.

Often it arrives for a person in the stretch nobody has a name for.

Not the raw months, where everybody brought food and nobody expected anything. The years afterward, where you function, you go to work, you laugh at things, and some part of you is still standing in water.

Look at the posture on this card. One foot on the bank, one in the pool. Nothing about it reads as a problem to be solved.

That’s the whole instruction, and it’s the opposite of what people get told. Nobody has to pick a world. You’re not failing at moving on because the other one is still real to you.

Grief doesn’t end so much as it gets blended into a life with enough other things in it, and the proportions keep changing for years.

You are allowed to hold both.

That’s not resignation, and it isn’t recovery either. It’s the long middle, where the pouring happens, and it’s doing more than it looks like it’s doing.

Worth saying plainly, since this card is about proportion: a good therapist belongs in that mix too. My work sits alongside that kind of support rather than in place of it.

The Temperance Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is Temperance a good card?

Yes. Upright it points to balance, healing, plus progress that holds because it wasn’t rushed.

Is Temperance a healing card?

It’s the clearest one in the deck. Recovery, repair, and integration all live here, especially beside The Star.

What does Temperance mean in the future position?

A steadier stretch ahead, arriving gradually rather than announcing itself.

What number is Temperance in tarot?

Card fourteen of the Major Arcana, right after Death and just before The Devil.

Where Temperance Might Be Pointing You Now

If Temperance keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right before people stop treating two parts of their life as a choice.

Yours might only want adjusting rather than deciding.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to find what’s out of proportion, plus what you’ve been told to choose between when you were always allowed both.

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Keep Reading

Wheel of Fortune · Justice · The Hanged Man · Death · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

Slow work, steady pace, and a screen in place of a waiting room. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, held to be one of the best tarot readers in the world and among the most trusted psychic mediums anywhere. Every reading happens online, which is how his week blends Anniston, Dothan, Valdosta, Ocala, Sarasota, Naples, Myrtle Beach, Greenville, Spartanburg, Johnson City, Morgantown, Altoona, Binghamton, Utica, Sault Ste. Marie, Granby, North Battleford, Truro, Nowra, Taree, Maryborough, Esperance, Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, and Grahamstown, along with people right across the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support with real psychological depth behind it make up the practice, and nothing in a session leans on fear or theatrics. Anyone ready to read for themselves can start with his online tarot courses.