This is a card about moderation. Drink with moderation, smoke with moderation, watch TV with moderation, and perhaps read blogs about Tarot with moderation.
The excess of good things could soon become harmful. Getting drunk feels terrible, watching TV all day could get you depressed, and reading all day long for several days could give you headaches.
This card is about governing your desire with reason. Not repressing your desire, but governing. Not that you shall not drink in your whole life, but that you can stop yourself from drinking too much because you choose to.
This is basically a card about good habits for a happy life. Early to bed and early rise. Drink and eat but not too much. Exercise but don’t kill yourself. Have sex but don’t have sex all day long.
These good habits prove challenging. Because come on, everybody drinks, gets high, stays up and buys impulsively only to regret later. Our impulses are strong, and taming them isn’t an easy task.
Harmful impulses are not only about sensation and material things. Many have impulses to harm their own relationship, business, or even themselves.
Remember the time when your boyfriend doesn’t call you back so you call him six times in a row? Of course you know that doing this will only drive him away, but you still want to do it.
If we leave our life to our impulses, it will eventually destroy us. We will ruin our healthy, choose an abusive partner, get angry in business negotiations, and spend all our money on getting fat.
It takes a conscious decision to battle these impulses and such decision is no small achievement.
Temperance is also about balance and the combination of opposites. Combine two ideas to get a better idea. Combine two companies to make a company. Or how two men work together to solve a difficult problem.
In these situations, this card could also be signifying the harmony of such an union.
Many believe Temperance is not a good card when it appears in a relationship reading. The idea is that relationship should be passionate, should make you feel something emotionally. But Temperance is a calm card, it says love is absent or at least is not free-flowing.
It makes sense but I don’t believe letting your love run wild is a good idea. Have you ever dated someone who makes you feel strongly but turns out to be a jerk? In retrospect, can you tell that there are signs for his problematic behavior in the very beginning?
Well, at least I have. Sometimes we buy into our romantic feelings and ignore the warning signs, then we suffer.
Temperance might mean that you are taking the warning signs into consideration instead of just being driven by your emotion. It may mean that particular relationship won’t go well, but it’s also very good for your emotional health.
This is, again, a good habit that few have.