The Temperance Tarot Card and Isis

Tarot and Myth: Temperance and the Goddess Isis

The Temperance Tarot card represents a time of rest that comes after significant change, even loss. The rest is required so that you have the time to integrate who you were, with who you are now after the changes that occurred in the time just past. When you make time, or take a pause, you are able to ‘re-gather’, collecting the various forces of the self to find new strength and continue on your spiritual journey.

Temperance offers us a great teaching on how to do this through the myth that is connected to her. It is the Egyptian goddess Isis who fleshes this out for us most beautifully. 

The husband of Isis was the god Osiris. He was murdered and hacked apart by a fellow god, Set. Isis mourned her husband quite deeply for her love for him was true, but rather than sinking into the grief and getting stuck in it, she moved through and got to work on sorting things out.

Along with some allies, Isis sought out her husband’s remains and retrieved every last one of them. She was then able to put him back together and breathe life into him. Think about the imagery in the Temperance Tarot card here – she holds two cups, one in each hand. Temperance pours the fluid from one cup into the other, thereby mixing and blending the contents until it is not two seperate ingredients, but rather one brand new, fully integrated concoction. In the traditional Smith-Waite deck you will see yellow irises growing around the feet of the angel. This is a card of promise, of healing, integration and renewal.