TarotTuesday: The Fool’s Journey - Temperance

Hello! What a joy to have you here as we rejoin The Fool on His Journey through the Major Arcana. Last week was pretty intense as He had a very intimate experience with Death. That kind of event will change a person, for sure.

While walking on His road, consciously aware of these dual feelings of lightness and gravity, The Fool begins to feel thirsty. He checks His travel jug only to find it empty. Thankfully, He hears the gentle gurgle of a brook up ahead, so off He goes in search of water.

He reaches the brook, and immediately drops to His knees and drinks until His thirst is slaked. It’s as He’s filling His jug with the cool clean water to savor for later that He notices He is not alone. There is a woman standing a few meters downstream from Him. He approaches Her eager to make Her acquaintance.

Upon closer inspection, The Fool notices that this woman has wings extending out from Her back. ‘She must be an angel!’, He thinks. (It seems fitting, He reckons, as He just experienced Death.)

The angel is standing with one foot in the water and one foot on the mossy bank. She seems to be pouring water back and forth between a silver goblet and a golden one. There are flowers scattered round the embankment, and Her work (or play? The Fool is unsure which …) is making rainbows dance all around.

The Fool introduces Himself. ‘I am Temperance,’ the angel replies.

Temperance teaches The Fool about how to find balance in a world full of seeming polar opposites. She shows Him the alchemy of creating something beautiful and enlightening from two polar forces/ideas/things. Her example is in how She continues to work with the two opposite elements of water and air with the aid of the gold and silver goblets, and how working with them in this new and playful way creates the beautiful gift of rainbows.

The Fool recognizes that this is a gift He can apply to His life, too. He has been on a long journey. During the first part, He was learning many different lessons about the external world and how to relate to it. During this most recent phase, He’s been learning many lessons about how to embody all He’s learned in a way that allows Him to bridge the gap between His head and His heart. Temperance teaches Him the value in continuing to play with those lessons, no matter how contradictory they may seem, in order to merge them into a beautiful synthesis that will open up the way for something new and magickal to be birthed forth.

Just like the last experience in the first phase of lessons, which was represented by The Chariot, Temperance, the last experience in the second phase of lessons, teaches about balancing two opposing forces. Her message is different, though, in that it is more subtle in energetics because The Fool has graduated from the phase of physical survival, and is now integrating what it means to have a higher understanding of the world and His place within it, marrying the body with the mind in a more whole, divine expression of being.

Grateful to Temperance for sharing Her magick with Him, The Fool bows down and kisses Her dry foot. She smiles and nods, and The Fool returns to the road, thirst slaked, and heart opened.

Next week marks the entrance to the third and final phase of lessons for our hero. Tune in on Tuesday to watch it all unfold!