Cult of Tarot Forum

Would anyone like to share their thoughts as to why Temperance comes after XIII (death) and just before the Devil ? I've often pondered this and then even pondered it some more.

Is it the period of rest and recuperation and healing one needs after going through the death experience ? The angel in Temperance looks like a healer. A sort of ancient Florence Nightingale.

A rather daunting task awaits us next when one comes face to face with the Devil. He'll need to be overcome somehow. I suppose one needs to restore one's soul before taking him on. But does Temperance speak of restoring one's soul?

She's got wings. Big ones. So she's an important angel. Angels are messengers. So what's her message that's so important to know in between these two cards? What exactly is her role here?

I'd love to have your thoughts. Any. Just toss them in the basket like flowers. I'm sort of puzzled.

I might think more and come back later, but the first thing that comes into my mind is that none of the virtues make a lot of sense with their placement. IIRC, their position jumped around quite a bit in the early, pre-TdM decks.

If I was going to think about it more, I think about whether Temperance has any significance as either a 4 or 5 (14=4+1) or, more likely both. If we reduce to the Emperor and the Hierophant, we have both the worldly and the spiritual realms. One for each cup perhaps?

Temperance waters the wine.
Moderation makes sense when you're moving from Death to the Devil. It's a somewhat rough patch.

IDK, that sounds like some pretty weak sauce.

Charlie Brown wrote: ↑20 Jul 2019, 00:47 IDK, that sounds like some pretty weak sauce.

Angels are no fun at parties.

katrinka wrote: ↑20 Jul 2019, 01:46

Charlie Brown wrote: ↑20 Jul 2019, 00:47 IDK, that sounds like some pretty weak sauce.

Angels are no fun at parties.

Devils may be more exciting, huh ?

Charlie Brown makes a good point that the placement of the virtues is maybe a bit haphasard. Will keep this in mind.

Moderation, you said, Katrinka. I reckon that must be a big part of it. One needs to be clear headed when one goes out to meet this Devil. He, like the magician, has magical powers - but his are used to hypnotise us into believing all sorts of nonsense. If one is clear headed, one should be able to separate the fact from the fiction.

Also "and every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." (Corinthians)

Marigold wrote: ↑20 Jul 2019, 15:09 Moderation, you said, Katrinka. I reckon that must be a big part of it. One needs to be clear headed when one goes out to meet this Devil. He, like the magician, has magical powers - but his are used to hypnotise us into believing all sorts of nonsense. If one is clear headed, one should be able to separate the fact from the fiction.

I don't think it's as cut and dried as that. It's the last card before the celestials, after all.

When the oldest decks were produced, yes, Europe was Christian. A lot of that was due to (extremely nasty) coercion, and not only against nonchristians. Catholicism and Protestantism were in competition - if your country's "official" religion changed from one to the other and you didn't change with it, I imagine it was pretty easy to end up on a gibbet.

I don't pretend to know what people thought about all that. But I can imagine what it was like - if people I knew were killed in the name of Christianity, or put in the stocks and pelted with garbage because they found it necessary to do some job on the Sabbath, or some other silly infraction, I might privately decide that in reality, God was evil,the Devil was good, and it was all a big lie, or else just be privately atheist. "The tree is known by its fruit", right? People didn't have libraries at their disposal. They couldn't talk about these things, either. And they may not see the gaps in the logic.

There is some piousness in the old decks, yes. But there is also a certain irreverence, so I wonder...

Moving along to later depictions, consider Crowley's (somewhat projected, lol) Devil: https://www.corax.com/tarot/cards/devil.html

The scientist who sets out to prove a theory in the face of public ignorance and disapproval really is a kind of hero. He's the reason we aren't squatting around eating rancid food and dying of preventable diseases or a gum infection at 35. The lie in this example is "no restrictions, no limitations, nothing is forbidden": there have been some horrific things done under the banner of "science". And strangely enough, those things have mostly served no purpose. I suspect many of the perpetrators were simply sadistic and using science as a cover.

Additionally, there's the Baphomet angle https://www.learnreligions.com/eliphas- ... ndes-95993 Levi's Baphomet certainly isn't evil.

It's a nuanced card. It can be nasty AF, or otherwise. I have to really take attendance into account with it, probably moreso than with a lot of the others.

katrinka wrote: ↑21 Jul 2019, 01:18
I don't pretend to know what people thought about all that. But I can imagine what it was like - if people I knew were killed in the name of Christianity, or put in the stocks and pelted with garbage because they found it necessary to do some job on the Sabbath, or some other silly infraction, I might privately decide that in reality, God was evil,the Devil was good, and it was all a big lie, or else just be privately atheist. "The tree is known by its fruit", right? People didn't have libraries at their disposal. They couldn't talk about these things, either. And they may not see the gaps in the logic.

I doubt there were many atheists around if any. Religion was just part and parcel of the whole scene. It was everywhere. Couldn't escape it. The idea that a god (even if there were still some pagan beliefs around) didn't exist seems to be very improbable. But if I am proved wrong, I will be grateful for the corrected misconceptions.

I had a book once called The Devil in the Middle Ages. Does anyone have a copy ?

I remember now a quote from a course I took once. It was "you have to meet (overcome) the Devil before you meet (come face to face) with God". I suppose that means you need to overcome those last barriers that are holding you back. (Which could be a useful thing to remember when doing an "ordinary" tarot reading. Like "your fears and doubts are holding you back from realising your potential" or "you're not going to bring harmony into your marriage if you're holding old grudges".)

of course there were atheists around. albeit, the making of gods is a human trait, and so there were far more heathens and followers of "false" gods.

the sequence of cards from Death to the Devil is one of the more structurally involved and significant of the Major Arcana. aside from the formal affiliation with Capricorn, The Devil is ruled by Scorpio, which is stagnant water. stagnant water is poison, a Tantalus-like torment. there is no water on the Devil card - no slaking of thirst, but more: no movement; water loosens and dissolves. Scorpio is fixed water; this is the slavery and impasse of The Devil. all crimes, all deficiencies of spirit become a log-jam here. It is Scorpio's burden and raison d'etre to overcome, vindicate, and surpass this indenture. it happens through indulgence, through suffering, and through sacrifice.

Astrologically, Scorpio is affiliated with death, hence its formal connection with the Death card. it is also the only sign to have 3 distinct levels or attributes - the scorpion (sometimes snake), the Eagle, the Phoenix. we may see this triad in Devil, Temp., Death. for reasons which are too complex to go into here, the failures of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini build up in Scorpio, and it is Scorpio who must redeem them. If Scorpio fails in this, an eddy is formed, wherein one cannot proceed. Temp. moderates death, softening the blow, but often such that one is trapped within the Devil and cannot break free. in a way, this triad is an inversion or shadow of the Trinity, just as is the man/woman/devil triad on the Devil card itself. Again, it is iterated on Temp, where one liquid (red, solar, male) circulates to another (blue, lunar, female) by a 3rd party (the divine, the concealed, the dialectic).

Temp is associated with Nut, guardian of the shades of the dead. one may think here of Christ's blood (sacrifice) and the water that drained from the Spear of Destiny's gash (crime), themselves calling to mind the water turned into wine, the wine aspect of communion (wine turned into blood), and the oils of the last rites. These aspects of Temp. are hopeful - symbolized by the rainbow - and touched with grace, but are nevertheless wrapped up in the potential for stagnancy it and the Death & Devil cards indicate. Temp. mollifies, as it were, but - like Odysseus in the land of the Lotus-Eaters - the journey is not over.

Temp. is Nun in Hebrew, from the Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake. When things are severe, ie the Death card, Temp. tempers the severity; but sometimes severity can only be answered with severity - recall, Christ brought not peace but the sword. severity answered with severity is the Tower; severity mollycoddled is the Devil - the snake eating its own tail. Temp. wants fruition, and to give birth - note how the liquid passes over her womb - but she cannot make the querent's decisions for them, or act on their behalf; the querent, like Scorpio, must break free from its own fixed water.


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chiscotheque wrote: ↑23 Jul 2019, 18:33 Temp. moderates death, softening the blow, but often such that one is trapped within the Devil and cannot break free.
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Trapped literally forever ??

If you ever stop posting on this forum I'll come and hunt you down. Be warned.

I take back of course my comment on atheism. If I'd googled it for even ten seconds I'd have seen I was sorely mistaken.

Marigold wrote: ↑23 Jul 2019, 17:15

katrinka wrote: ↑21 Jul 2019, 01:18
I don't pretend to know what people thought about all that. But I can imagine what it was like - if people I knew were killed in the name of Christianity, or put in the stocks and pelted with garbage because they found it necessary to do some job on the Sabbath, or some other silly infraction, I might privately decide that in reality, God was evil,the Devil was good, and it was all a big lie, or else just be privately atheist. "The tree is known by its fruit", right? People didn't have libraries at their disposal. They couldn't talk about these things, either. And they may not see the gaps in the logic.

I doubt there were many atheists around if any. Religion was just part and parcel of the whole scene. It was everywhere. Couldn't escape it. The idea that a god (even if there were still some pagan beliefs around) didn't exist seems to be very improbable. But if I am proved wrong, I will be grateful for the corrected misconceptions.

It's impossible to estimate numbers, since professed atheists ran a risk of severe punishment, possibly torture and death. I'm sure a lot of them just kept their mouths shut.

I'm sure they were around. The churches, then as now, pushed a lot of things that didn't work. They weren't teaching the masses much besides a simplistic, Skydaddy concept of God and a very literalist interpretation of the scriptures, things that virtually any thinking person would at least question.

And prayers very often don't do anything. That must have put a good number of people off.

There was a lot of criticism of the religious establishment during the Renaissance and Reformation. While this doesn't prove the existence of atheism in itself, it does point to the fact that people were just as capable of critical thinking then as they are now.

Religion is everywhere now, too. And there are still atheists - the difference is that they are free to say so these days.

(We didn't have Inquisitors in my home town, either, but people tended to be very scandalized by atheists. Atheists ran the risk of being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, ostracized, etc. - especially 100 years ago. Still, there were around. This grave is a local landmark: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/385 ... aac-towell)

I remember now a quote from a course I took once. It was "you have to meet (overcome) the Devil before you meet (come face to face) with God". I suppose that means you need to overcome those last barriers that are holding you back. (Which could be a useful thing to remember when doing an "ordinary" tarot reading. Like "your fears and doubts are holding you back from realising your potential" or "you're not going to bring harmony into your marriage if you're holding old grudges".)

“The demon that you can swallow gives you its power.”
- Joseph Campbell

I'm very pleased to learn that there were all these atheists and non believers. I seem to have gone through my life having a completely false impression. I've probably said it before but if I had I promise I won't say it again, my ignorance astounds me sometimes. The Devil thrives on ignorance I would think.

As I mentioned, it's impossible to get numberrs.
But if religion was something everybody actually wanted, coercion wouldn't have been needed.
Building a church would have been like hanging out a sign that says "FREE COCKTAILS".

katrinka wrote: ↑23 Jul 2019, 22:31 As I mentioned, it's impossible to get numberrs.
But if religion was something everybody actually wanted, coercion wouldn't have been needed.
Building a church would have been like hanging out a sign that says "FREE COCKTAILS".

Well my mother always said to be beware of free cocktails. Weird things can happen. And I can almost hear my father responding "there's nothing that's free. Someone's always paying for it. And that's usually the poor and exploited."

Warnings aside, people would show up in DROVES.
I think most would rather roll the dice with the free drinks than listen to some pastor's crazy ideas about God sending hurricanes because people "did something gay".

Yes, the megachurches draw big crowds, but they're in highly populated areas. The actual percentage of humanity that attends such things is, luckily, quite small.

Marigold wrote: ↑23 Jul 2019, 19:44
Trapped literally forever ??

gosh, i hope not. no, i mean rather than eternal damnation the trap of addiction, where one repeats the same empty cycle, destroying those around them and themselves inside. The Tower is the breaking of the cycle; the severe situation that demands to be severed. outside forces may align to facilitate the moment, but it is an internal crucible, a spiritual orgasm like epiphany, a Phoenix from the flames.

chiscotheque wrote: ↑24 Jul 2019, 16:23
gosh, i hope not. no, i mean rather than eternal damnation the trap of addiction, where one repeats the same empty cycle, destroying those around them and themselves inside. The Tower is the breaking of the cycle; the severe situation that demands to be severed. outside forces may align to facilitate the moment, but it is an internal crucible, a spiritual orgasm like epiphany, a Phoenix from the flames.

Indeed. Very nicely put. There must be an outside force though that operates once the internal work has been done. At least this is what the Tarot seems to be informing of. The rushing of the wind and the tongues of fire that are evoked in the arcanum of the Tower were only for the disciples. No-one else could have seen them even if they'd walked right through them. They would have been oblivious.

It is an act of Grace - it comes unexpected at times - and mystics have described sometimes the agony and the ecstasy. Of course, the Grace comes only to those who are ready to receive it.

Marigold wrote: ↑24 Jul 2019, 17:39 Of course, the Grace comes only to those who are ready to receive it.

Grace, yes. but sometimes other things come when one isn't - or at any rate when one doesn't think one is - ready. i know, from personal experience. an example is Franklin Merrell-Wolff, a mathematician whose kundalini was unexpectedly awoken and spent many years trying to understand what happened. he wrote a book about it called Pathways Through To Space.

chiscotheque wrote: ↑25 Jul 2019, 05:07

Grace, yes. but sometimes other things come when one isn't - or at any rate when one doesn't think one is - ready. i know, from personal experience. an example is Franklin Merrell-Wolff, a mathematician whose kundalini was unexpectedly awoken and spent many years trying to understand what happened. he wrote a book about it called Pathways Through To Space.

Yes. Sometimes it seems to have come out of the blue for some people. They must have been ready though. Grace would have been lying in wait I would suspect for the correct configuration in order to reveal itself. Must come as a huge shock though. Even those tiny little moments of mystical experiences that I've had have affected me deeply and the memory still lingers and one yearns to go back. The Portuguese "saudade" describes I think in some measure this longing. A deep nostalgia, a desire to go back "home". But one cannot pick and choose. These experiences come or they don't. But once one has had a glimpse, even for a fraction of a second, the longing only increases. The Sufis speak very eloquently of this unbearable longing to return to their Beloved and become One with Him.

Interesting considerations of the sequence of Death, Temperance, Devil. I think there is some wisdom in the order of these, who knows how consciously done. The Death Image is one of Release, the Devil Image is one of Entrapment, or, out breath of soul into spirit and in breath of soul into matter, to the extreme. In the between of these two is Temperance, balancing life force over the heart in the Renaissance versions and Golden Dawn versions. So, Temperance is the "Golden Mean" or path of moderation between the Release into the Light and the Entrapment into the Darkness. While we are incarnated here to be and to become, this is the right place. At least this is one angle on the three-card sequence.

Parzival wrote: ↑25 Jul 2019, 21:40 Interesting considerations of the sequence of Death, Temperance, Devil. I think there is some wisdom in the order of these, who knows how consciously done. The Death Image is one of Release, the Devil Image is one of Entrapment, or, out breath of soul into spirit and in breath of soul into matter, to the extreme. In the between of these two is Temperance, balancing life force over the heart in the Renaissance versions and Golden Dawn versions. So, Temperance is the "Golden Mean" or path of moderation between the Release into the Light and the Entrapment into the Darkness. While we are incarnated here to be and to become, this is the right place. At least this is one angle on the three-card sequence.

Thanks so much for joining this thread, Parzival.

I've been puzzling over this post since I read it last night. It made sense, then didn't. Then again it did but then it didn't. There's something I'm not getting here I think. I'm sure you can explain.

Why would the Release be followed by Entrapment ? Surely it would be the other way round ? The only thing I can think of when speaking of going from light to darkness would be a reference to the Fall (Adam and Eve being thrown out unceremoniously from the Garden of Eden). But there was no Temperance between these two events. Or are you talking of something else ?

Also I don't think soul/spirit can be breathed into matter. But perhaps that would be more of a metaphysical discussion which doesn't have a rightful place in this thread.

I look forward to reading what you have further to say on this matter.

EDITED TO ADD : I should have gone and read Genesis 2 again. As soon as I wrote what I said I remembered that there was something about god breathing his breath into man. Indeed it does say "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

So at least one version of the creation does mention this.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. First of all, I see this triad of cards (13-14-15) as a unit and not as only a sequence in order. So, its about how the three Images are combined to me, and how there is a central card with a card before and a card after, interrelated. I think this is biblical as well as Hermetic/Masonic, which links together the images metaphysically. Now, the Death Image is horrific in its depiction of skeletal remains, but with that, unseen, is the release of the soul into the beyond or spiritual cosmos, a kind of "breathing out," not necessarily at the moment of Death, since this happens in initiation rites,etc. The Devil is opposite to this process-- an imprisonment into desire/matter, a down and in, not up and out. If Death is
extreme,ultimate freedom from matter or embodiment, Devil is extreme, ultimate bondage in matter or embodiment. My out breath, in breath references are metaphorical. You could also say expansion against contraction or cosmic circle against earthly point. These two could be reversed in the order, I think, because either way Temperance is between them, as the path of moderation or "tempering" of the surrounding opposites, in this life or in the afterlife, so that there is neither an escape into total freedom of the beyond nor a this-world attachment to desires/matter. That's about it for now. It's just one way to look at a complex matrix of meaning. Hope this helps to give some clarity.

Parzival : So when I hear that you are considering these three cards here as a unit and not necessarily as a sequence, your contribution makes more sense. Thanks for pointing this out. Now it’s easier for me to understand.

I know what you mean by the “breathing in” and “breathing out” and understood this to be metaphorical. Are you implying that Temperance is that moment in between the out breath and the in breath ?

Yes, when viewed as a unit, I agree fully that they can be reversed in order as you say, in fact as a continuous cycle until at least we finally climb out of the cave and into the light and have not run back inside terrified of this light but embraced it.

When you say “as the path of moderation or "tempering" of the surrounding opposites, in this life or in the afterlife, so that there is neither an escape into total freedom of the beyond nor a this-world attachment to desires/matter”, I’ll mention two thoughts that came immediately to mind.

Difficult to put into words. It always is. We have to make do with those we have and hope that they will serve their purpose.

For those on some kind of spiritual path, we go through moments of great heights and when a whole new horizon appears. These rarely last long at least in our limited view of time. And how hard it is when we get sucked back into the fragmented world we return to. Some writings speak of this difficulty (euphemism) of “living between two worlds”. But always there is this Temperance between the two. That moment between the breaths (which is what I think you may have been referring to, but if you weren’t I do here). She is the central figure. Without her there would be no possibility of even moving between the two worlds.

And then came to mind the thought of the admonition in various scriptures and writings to die daily. To die daily would also require a means of living again. And I see this in the triad you speak of. We die to our false concepts, beliefs, desires… pretty cool although dying is not always a pleasant experience. Then we have to die again the next “day”. There are always more barriers to break through, more walls to break down (after the Berlin Wall fell, a well-known French singer/songwriter wrote and sang one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard written in reaction to this event – “combien de murs derrière le mur qui tombe?” – how many walls lie beyond the one that is falling ?) One cannot live on yesterday’s manna it has been said.