This is not the first time this card has come up for me. Although I may look easy going, I'm not. I was an outwardly obedient child with a fierce sense of fairness, and wild emotions that I kept a cap on but always seethed under my surface. Ask my mother and she will tell you I was a wonderful child but not such a docile and even-tempered adult. She talks of the young me with regret. I am far happier now with choice and possibility. Those early years seemed long, dark, in some ways prison, always having to keep control.The Temperance card is about balance, about maintaining the middle ground. It is the eye in the middle of the hurricane of life, something I can relate to, for I understand as an air sign the ferocious winds inside me. Balance for me is not just desirable but necessary, vital. Reducing stress is a critical part of maintaining a healthy heart and, after being broken open once, I do not want such a violent call to moderation and the golden mean again.
In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Temperance card depicts Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax of Austen's novel, Emma. They are in a sense, opposites, and each by the end of the novel, has to integrate aspects of the other in order to achieve their dreams, in both cases love, but not just, also a rightness to the world, Emma with a father still cared for in his comfort, for Jane her Aunts knowing a better life after losing their social position. The world of Highbury rights itself and both women become better for adopting some of the traits of their counterpart.
What Would Jane Do?
"The Angel that appears on this (and most) Temperance cards reminds us that we humans can invoke the heavenly realms by virtuous actions. Tempering ourselves with concerted effort and a devotion to inner and outer balances brings us one step closer to that angelic being." p. 40
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