Temperance
Trump XIV of the tarot: a winged figure pouring liquid from one cup to another. A. E. Waite read it as moderation and management.
Meaning
Waite's Temperance is a winged angel with the sign of the sun on the forehead, one foot on land and one in water, "pouring the essences of life from chalice to chalice", with a path rising to a light behind. Waite thought the name did not fit the image, and said it was "called Temperance fantastically".
What does the Temperance card mean?
Waite's meanings are "economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation"; reversed, "disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests", and matters of "churches, religions, sects, the priesthood".
In older decks
A nineteenth-century Milanese pack in the British Museum titles the card La Temperanza. Papus joined it to the fourteenth Hebrew letter, Nun, and Waite noted that Papus's own later deck gave the figure an Egyptian head-dress.
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsThe DevilTrump XV of the tarot: a horned, bat-winged figure with two chained people at his feet. A. E. Waite read it as ravage, violence and fatality.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsTumi (ceremonial knife)A ceremonial knife with a half-moon blade from the north coast of ancient Peru. The gold tumis of the Sicán (Lambayeque) culture carry a god on the handle, often identified as Naylamp, the dynasty’s mythical founder. The Tumi de Oro was declared a pre-Columbian symbol of Peru in 1981.
See also
Judgement, The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Trumps Major; The Greater Arcana and their Divinatory Meanings
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Symbolical Tarot
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), Italian tarots, second quarter of the nineteenth century, Milan
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves, letters and numbers or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 27, 2026. How we research
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