Temperance: water between two cups

The picture: a stream from cup to cup, one foot on land, one on water

Waite begins with a winged figure: the sign of the sun is on its forehead and on its breast are the square and triangle of the septenary. He says he speaks of it in the masculine sense, but that the figure is neither male nor female. The figure is supposed to be decanting the essences of life, one chalice into the next.

One foot stands upon the earth and one upon waters, which is said to illustrate the nature of the essences. A direct path goes up to certain heights on the verge of the horizon, and above there is a great light, through which a crown is seen vaguely.

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BaZiFlow's original Temperance with three ways to read it

On the RWS card: a golden-haired figure with a gold disc on the forehead and, on a white robe, a triangle inside a square; great wings behind with rays of light above; two gold cups with a stream running from one to the other; one foot in the water and the other on a stone at the bank; yellow irises at the right and, at the left, a path winding toward distant hills with a burst of light at the pass.

Read it from the top down: the cups, the feet, the path.

What Waite lists: economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation

Waite's divinatory meaning is five words:

Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.

The five fall into three small groups: economy and frugality are about how much is spent, moderation about where to stop, management and accommodation about how things are arranged. They are all words of everyday household life, while Part II describes a winged figure and the essences of life, and the tone of the two places is far apart.

Cups, feet, path and light: what he wrote, and the old readings he set aside

The symbols Waite writes down gather in three places: the cups and water, the feet, the path and light. For each he gives the look, and for only one he adds a purpose.

Then Waite sets some older readings aside. All the conventional emblems are renounced here, he says, and so are the conventional meanings: changes in the seasons, the perpetual movement of life, even the combination of ideas. It is also untrue, he adds, to say that the figure symbolizes the genius of the sun, though it is the analogy of solar light, realized in the third part of our human triplicity.

The name too is given "fantastically": it is called Temperance because, when the rule of it obtains in our consciousness, it tempers, combines and harmonises the psychic and material natures. Under that rule we know in our rational part something of whence we came and whither we are going.

How to read it: pour one complaint from one cup into another

The act in the picture is pouring: water runs from one cup to another, one foot is on earth and one on water, and a path lies ahead. Put onto a message passed along at work, it becomes three moves. The picture is borrowed, the steps are ours, and nothing like them appears in Waite.

1. 1

   One foot on land, one on water: part them first

   Split what you are about to relay into two kinds: what can be checked (which day, what failed, what the log shows) and what shifts (tone, feeling, your own guess). The first is the land under your feet; the second is water.

2. 2

   Cup to cup: a little at a time

   Do not tip the whole cup over at once. Relay one point, wait until the other person has taken it, then pour the next. Pour the checkable cup first.

3. 3

   The path ahead: end on a next step

   After each small pour, say who does what next and when you will report back. Wherever the water runs, a next step has to catch it.

Say a client sends a heated email on Friday complaining that exports keep failing, and you must pass it on to a developer. The water between the two cups can be sorted like this:

Reversed and neighboring cards: churches, disunion, competing interests, and three cards beside it

Waite's reversed list runs in two strings:

Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even the priest who will marry the Querent; also disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.

The first string points to religious matters and the text does not say why; the second, disunion, unfortunate combinations and competing interests, looks just like tempering, combining and harmonising when it has not succeeded. Calling the second string 'harmony that failed' is the reader's sorting of the list; the text does not put it that way.