Temperance as a Person: Balanced, Moderate and Mixing Carefully

Written by Chaya the Medium.

Temperance as a person is the one who can be friends with both sides of the argument. Here is the character, upright and reversed, in love and at work.

If you want the short answer, Temperance as a person is balanced, patient, moderate and harmonising: someone who blends opposites, calms extremes, and lives at a sustainable pace that other people find either restful or infuriating. They are the mediator, the healer, the one who does not take sides and makes both sides feel heard. They do not spill.

This is the angel with one foot on land and one in the water, pouring between two cups. The water does not spill. It never does.

Temperance as a person: the character

Tina Gong's Temperance guide at Labyrinthos associates the upright card with balance, moderation, patience and purpose. Major Arcana cards are less often read as people than the court cards are, and when they are, they describe a person living out that card's theme rather than a fixed temperament. The Major Arcana overview at Biddy Tarot is a useful second reference.

The Temperance person is calm, diplomatic, measured and purposeful. They avoid excess in everything: food, feeling, work, speech. They are often healers, counsellors, mediators, or simply the person in a family who keeps the peace. They have a sense of a larger purpose that keeps them steady, and a patience with process that others lack. They are rarely in a hurry and rarely wrong about pace.

They are not bland, though the dramatic think so. Temperance has strong feelings and strong convictions; they simply hold them in proportion, and the holding is a discipline rather than an absence.

Their strengths

Balance. Diplomacy. Patience. Healing presence. The ability to see both sides and blend them. Moderation that makes them sustainable. A quiet sense of purpose.

Their shadow

Fence-sitting. Avoiding conflict that needed to happen. Moderation that becomes blandness. Refusing to commit to one side when one side was right. Managing everyone's feelings and neglecting their own. Slowness that misses the moment.

Temperance reversed as a person

Reversed, Temperance as a person is the balance lost: excessive, erratic, swinging between extremes, or someone whose moderation has become an inability to feel anything strongly. They may be a person out of harmony with themselves, prone to indulgence or to rigid abstinence, or whose healing has become control.

At the gentler end, the reversal describes a Temperance person who has been pouring between other people's cups for so long that their own has run dry. A reversed card as a person is the same theme lived badly, or a person stuck in the card's lesson. It is not a different person.

Temperance as a partner

As a partner, Temperance is calm, patient, loyal, fair and healing to be with, and they will not supply drama or urgency. They need a partner who values peace without needing it to be dull, who can tolerate a measured pace, and who will insist, occasionally, that Temperance say what they actually want rather than what would balance. They are a restorative love and a slow one.

Temperance at work

At work, Temperance is the mediator, the project manager who keeps the team balanced, the healer in any caring profession. They do well wherever opposites need reconciling. As a boss they are fair, calm and sometimes too slow to pick a side.

How to recognise Temperance in your life

Look for the person everyone trusts in a dispute, who never seems to overdo anything, whose presence lowers the temperature of a room. In yourself, Temperance is the part that blends, and the part that has stopped choosing. No card can identify a specific real person, and a reader who tells you a Major Arcana card is definitely your ex, your boss or your new match is guessing. What the card can do is describe a theme clearly enough that you recognise who in your life is living it, or which part of yourself is.

What to record before drawing again

Keep three short notes: the question you asked, who Temperance might describe, and what they are refusing to take a side on. The third note is the shadow, if there is one.

For comparison, Strength as a person and the Star as a person describe different characters. The Temperance card meaning page covers the card in full, and Temperance as feelings, Temperance as timing and Temperance as a yes or no cover the other questions people most often ask of it. For a personal interpretation, my guide to a love psychic reading online explains how I work, and the three-card tarot listing and customer reviews are worth reading before deciding whether to order.