AUTHOR’S NOTE: In previous essays I’ve described the Temperance card as representing “the ‘fine Art of Right Action’ (neither too much force nor too little) when a discriminating finesse is called for.” This has served me well as a practical definition over the years, but I just came across two ideas in Benebell Wen’s Holistic Tarot to add to my lexicon: the concepts of fusion and reconciliation.

The premise is that, when this card appears in a reading, the querent must create a meaningful “fusion” between his or her native abilities and the demands that prevailing circumstances place on those talents. This almost sounds like goal-oriented alignment of the self-improvement kind. It strikes me as two-thirds preparation and one-third execution, like the “Ready, aim, fire!” command, or holding your breath to steady your hand before attempting a delicate task. In both cases, the subject and the object of the action “become one” in a timeless moment of intense concentration.

Another way to view it is as “matching speeds” between the potential one brings to the matter and the situational reality that is the intended recipient of that energy. The “finesse” lies in balancing force with form by reconciling internal aspirations with external expectations to generate equilibrium that can in turn serve as a springboard for directed momentum. It’s a function of “just the right amount” of effort brought to bear on the known magnitude of the issue to produce the desired effect. (Although there isn’t an exact correlation, I’m inspired by Newton’s Second Law of Motion here: Force equals Mass times Velocity, or “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”)

However, this interrelationship doesn’t play out in a vacuum, so Newton’s Third Law of paired equal-and-opposite forces must also be considered in an oblique sense: the unpredictability of future events can introduce countervailing influences that act as a deterrent, diminishing or even defeating that momentum while also deflecting its aim. In practical terms this could mean resistance or “push-back” from circumstances that may be purely coincidental and impersonal as opposed to intentional. The notion of inherent “friction” comes to mind that may drive the initiative into “zero-sum” territory unless additional acceleration can be mustered to overcome it.

But that can take us beyond Temperance and into the manipulative realm of the Devil where discord, deviance and disruption run rampant in stark contrast to the noble deliberations of Temperance. If the Devil can’t master the situation with ersatz finesse in the form of guile, he will find other ways to work his wiles that don’t mimic the methods of his predecessor, and he can certainly “fake it” with the best of them by simply countermanding every reasonable request put to him.

Temperance as “fusion” reminds me of my long-ago studies in industrial metallurgy, which hasn’t progressed that far from the sword-making days, we just understand it better. Every bar of raw iron has a structure of interconnected “grains” that at the microscopic level seem to be completely disorganized in a jumble of crystalline fragments, with deposits of uncombined graphite (think minute flakes of pencil-lead) at the boundaries between them. This presents a flawed structure that once rendered iron implements brittle and prone to breaking when struck.

In Medieval times swords-in-the-making were toughened by heating the metal in a forge until almost molten, pounding it into shape, then “quenching” or plunging it in cold water (we’ve all seen the movie) and grinding it to sharpness. The metallurgical effect of this “tempering” was to align all of the grains in the same direction and propel the degraded graphite into chemical “solution” within the confines of each grain, yielding a sound, uniform composition for the crafting of an edged weapon. The inconsistent elements were thus effectively fused, although I’m not sure when and how this process was discovered during the Iron Age.

Regarding its tarot role, Temperance does not symbolize the self-sacrificing “wounded healer” Chiron as many assume, but rather suggests the archetypal “maestro” who scores the perfect instrumental passages and enlists the ideal performers to transform what could have been jarring dissonance into tuneful harmony. Rather than flailing away at it like lesser hacks, the orchestra applies more subtle persuasions to work its magic. If we think of Temperance as a metaphysical “blender” that homogenizes everything we put into it with a dash of the “Water of Spirit” (see my previous essay on that subject), we have the “ultimate smoothie” that can calm our existential jitters and reconcile our incompatible intentions. Betcha can’t drink just one!