Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)
Keywords
temperance, work, moving, extreme, balance, archetype, staying, learn, present, energy, card, efforting, wholeness, wisdom, conflicting energies, space, limit, flow, life, tamed
[0:13] Balance, patience, and moderation in life.
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Hello, hi everybody. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright, welcome to your heart magic. Today we are continuing our archetypes of the Tarot series, and we are tapping into temperance, Temperance is card 14 And the Tarot deck and it is a card that represents balance, patience, finding the middle road, finding a way to maintain equilibrium and calm when we are perhaps in the middle of chaos or trying to work with opposing energies and our life.
Temperance is an interesting card. The word itself has different connotations for people, some people really like it. Some people don't love the idea of moderation, if they tend to be have a lot of fire energy or go all in the idea of self restraint or patience or slowing down can sound really boring.
At the same time I actually wrote down the phrase Temperance is wisdom, that there's something about I think learning the quality of temperance and learning how to bring the essence of moderation into our life when it's needful that I see as a something experiential that we learn along the way, it doesn't always come easy. And a lot of times, I think it's a reflection of wisdom that we learn on the journey.
When this card pops up in a reading, it can mean a lot of things. It always depends on the query. And it always depends on what the individual might be seeking guidance on. But I tend to think that when we get the temperance card, we are being guided to seek a middle ground or to evaluate perhaps where we might be going to extremes in some part of our life and think about how can I balance that opposing energy.
So if we had been going, going, going, going and really busy and not taking any time for stillness, and we're feeling really stressed out? Like we are spread then and we get the card temperance. And question two, how can I like bring self care and right now or something? What do I need to know about my wife at this time? What some guidance, we might draw a temperance and that might be interpreted as guidance to look at where are you perhaps overdoing or over efforting or bringing some form of an extreme into your life?
And how might you think about balancing that out. So the reading might interpret that as being guided towards taking more time for time out or taking more time for rest or finding a way to bring more balance into your life. When I think about the car temperance, I think about anything that is an opposite in nature, night and day, the sun in the moon, fire and water sometimes when this card is drawn in the deck with different kinds of artwork, I have seen it where there is a woman and on the one hand she is holding something that is fire sun, this very light energy and the other hand, she might have moon or water or intuition.
[4:04] Temperance in Tarot and its significance in life.
And again, there is this sense of bringing them into harmony. So I printed out a little write up to read on temperance. This is from the website tamed wild and they do a lot of information and education with Tarot and magic and moon cycles and all sorts of fun things like this. And this popped up in my email earlier in the week and it felt so timely because I knew I would be making this podcast episode so I thought I would share the little write up that change Wilde had to say on temperance on the fool's journey after we meet death, we are greeted by temperance in the Major Arcana. The archetype of patience and flow.
Temperance arise to remind us that sometimes things are out of our control. While it feels a bit scary to admit we cannot wield the wand That is what we must do when Temperance is on her table. She is your stable inner strength whispering to you that you can withstand the storm because you have strong roots. She reminds us to be patient to stay calm and to keep the peace, while others around you may find momentum without word ambition, your current path is to hold steady and stay the course, balance and harmony are the goal. Breathe in and breathe out. Small steady steps are the only way to go where you are headed reversed. This card speaks to excess or lack of harmony and moderation, you are overdoing it and you need to rein it in, there is a blockage in the flow.
So take a look around and see where your energy is out of balance. When temperance shows up on your table reversed, it is your sign from the universe that you need to readdress your approach and realign to gain stability. So that is a write up from tamed wild and I will put a link down in the resource section. They have some really great tools out there. And if you are enjoying learning about taro and seeking more places for information, and they have some great articles, and they talk about it on a podcast they do so they're really fun resource.
So bringing it back to how can we feel inspired to work with the archetype of temperance in our life? Or what are some perspectives that temperance might have to offer us. And the first thing that I wrote down today as an idea to share was the phrase benign neutrality. This is a phrase that I often think about when I feel like I am in a space in life. And I'm not exactly sure which way to go.
Or I feel like there's a lot of pressure going on, or there is conflicting energies around me something that is creating tension or conflict or some sense that I'm not in flow, and that I'm needing to harness or I'm working too hard. I'm overthinking something like that. And I'm kind of questioning myself and saying,
What's my best approach to life right now? And how am I going to navigate and work through this situation? And I often use the phrase benign neutrality, when I think about just moving through something with peace and with ease. How can I flow like water today? How can I stay kind ly neutral? How can I stay in a place? Like if I were a car and I were just to put my stick into neutral? How can I be like that. And I find this a very helpful perspective, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, or like I said in conflict or tension, or just there's too much going on. And I'm not exactly sure what step to take or what direction to go in.
So I often think about the idea that if we don't know, then we're probably not meant to do something big or to push ourselves in some way. We're also probably not meant to sit still and do absolutely nothing at all, especially if we are being called to show up and engage with events going on around us. And so when I think about benign neutrality, I think about just showing up and staying in flow. And working with the energy the best. I know how I'm not resisting it. I'm not pushing against it. I am not trying to say this isn't happening. I'm in denial.
At the same time, I'm not over efforting and I'm not pushing through. And I'm not trying to force my will or force my way or force an outcome. Or second guess what an outcome might be. So we neither resist nor do we persist with a sense of over efforting it is just allowing ourselves to move through something with peace and ease. And that's a phrase I hear people say a lot in the spiritual community like May your path be blessed with peace and ease.
[9:07] Balance, harmony, and emotional temperance.
May your day be peaceful and easeful. I love that as a blessing. I love that as a meditation. And when I think about peace and ease the card Temperance is a beautiful card to reflect what those energies might look like. Because when we are in a space of temperance, when we are taking the middle road, not going to any extreme, but just staying in a space of calm equilibrium. I think we're much better able to access the space of staying peaceful and of staying useful.
And I really liked what it said and the tamed wild right up she reminds us to be patient to stay calm and to keep the peace while others around you may find momentum without word ambition. Your current path is to hold steady and stay the course balance and harmony are The goal, and that is benign neutrality, it's staying in our balance, staying in our center staying neutral.
Another way that I think temperance inspires us, and we can work with this archetype is to remember that, again, it's not either or it's not black and white. It's not one extreme or the other. It's both. And it is looking at two different roads that we could take. And instead of saying, I'm going left, or I'm going right, we say, I'm going to take the middle road, I'm gonna go down the middle as much as I can, or I'm going to see if I can find a third way, where I balance out these two roads, especially if they're extreme.
Now, I'm not talking about if we feel called to make a choice, and we're at a crossroads. And we know that we're being called into change in our life, and that it's time to walk away from something or leave something behind, or make a radical change, where we do need to do something that has a little bit more of an extreme limit to it, where maybe we're setting a boundary or saying I need to be done with this toxic relationship, it's no good for me, and I can't take a middle road where I keep it in my life. And at the same time, try and free myself from the toxic relationship, those two things work against one another.
We're not talking about something like that, this would not be a good use of, I think the car temporary answer this kind of interpretation that we're talking about. Now, what we might do, though, is make the choice to walk away. And instead of having the expectation for yourself that like we've washed our hands of it, we just turned off our feelings and we're moving on to a free and clear future and leaving that bad relationship that was toxic behind us, we might understand that our emotions don't need to be either or, and that we are going to keep moving forward with grief in our heart and sorrow that we had to let go and how to leave it behind.
We might choose to make space for the part of ourselves that didn't want to leave, and wanted to stay and still feels really hooked into this relationship that we knew we needed to set a limit around a boundary around and walk away from. So we might look at it as emotional temperance, and working with our emotions, as opposed to external actions temperance as a state of being.
And Temperance is something that we can create inside of ourselves, through harnessing our emotions, and realizing that it's not one thing or the other, it's either or. And that's something we talk about quite a bit on your heart magic is this idea that it's the fool that makes us who we are, that our wholeness is about seeing all parts of ourselves witnessing all feeling states making space for all feeling states, we don't dis own a part of ourselves, or a feeling that we have because it feels dark or bad.
Or we judge it in a way that it feels undesirable. And so we pretend like it's not there. And instead, we witness it and see it and decide how to maybe work with it constructively. And just recognize that this too, is part of our whole, all that is dark and shabby and torn and and repair in us. And all that is light and bright and beautiful. And seeking the higher road. All of that is part of our whole.
And we allow those two things to temper one another. So that we are able to learn from the full spectrum of our emotional state. So we actually talk about the idea of temperance all the time on this podcast, even if we're not using the word but I think the temperance card beautifully embodies some of the principles that we've been working on collectively with this idea of seeing the whole of ourselves.
[13:55] Finding balance between reflecting on past experiences and living in the present.
And I ran into this earlier today where I was doing some inner work on a few things coming up in my life. And part of what it was bringing up for me was a self reflection on how useful is it to look to our past to learn from where we've been to reflect on where we've been to understand our journey, we can learn from our memories, and when is it useful to do that? And when does it start to dip into being nostalgic or living in the past or making a museum out of times in our life that no longer exist?
And we're afraid to let go. And then the other side of that is the idea of being like present focused and looking at finding joy in the present and saying, Well, today is the day that I've been given and so I want to seize the day and I want to make beauty on it. And that sounds really good. But when taken to an extreme.
When taken to this car pay Diem you only live once and taken to an extreme where maybe an individual doesn't want to face their past. And so they are always staying so present focused and being like, what adventure can I create today? And if there is too much of that, we might look at that and say it would help them maybe to pause and reflect, maybe they are moving through things so quickly, and being so present focus that they're not really integrating lessons that they've learned, or they're running away from something.
So I was looking at these two extremes and working with them and thinking about what's the tension between the two of them? And there's not a right or wrong answer to this question. I think you can hear it and the reflections I'm giving you, it's more about looking at things situationally. And based on the individual, and when might it be too much?
And when might it be just enough? And how do we find our way in that. And as I was doing my own self reflection about some things coming up, in my own life, I had this realization where I was like, BethAnne, you know better than this. It's not either, or, it's both. And it is making space in holding space for everything that's coming up right now. And everything in my emotional palette, and things that I'm still learning from my past and reflecting on and doing integration work on, and some grief that's there from losses that I've had and working through that.
And it is this ongoing reminder that the present is where our joy is found. It's where our magic is found. It's where the gifts and day are found. And really working with those two opposing opposites, those tension of opposites in my life, and thinking about how can I harness those to not only be present focused, but to be present focused with wisdom, and with the knowledge of how my past informs me so I feel supported, and making good choices and maximizing my present and continuing to move into my future.
So that was a beautiful example of how temperance was coming up for me today. And ultimately, temperance helps us define the limits of one extreme to another. So like I said, a limit of how useful is it to reflect to the past? Well, there is a limit there, if somebody can't engage in the present, they can't find any joy right now, they are always saying the best days have passed, and going back to better times in life and kind of living in their in their mind and building this museum and this home out of memories, and they're missing the joy in the present.
We might say that doesn't sound constructive, it sounds like they might be really missing out on the gifts of right now. And so when we think about this idea of the wisdom of will, you do only live once, and if we're always in the past, we're missing the opportunity to create something wonderful in the present, we can work with those two things to see where the limitation of something is. And if somebody is always like you only live once and so they are thrill seeking and always traveling and moving from relationship to relationship. And that hashtag has almost become this like hat answer that they give, anytime something hard comes up, and they don't want to deal with it. And they say, Well, you only live once.
[18:21] Balancing extremes in life for wellness and wholeness.
So I'm gonna go chase this extreme or go chase this, they might smack into a limit of that, where too much of that isn't really being present focused. Because part of being present focused and living in the present is the ability to sit with ourselves, and to just be at peace with whatever stuff we have, and to not run from what's coming up inside of us. But to find a way to accept it and work with it, and know what to do with those themes and feelings and experiences so that we don't have so much emotional clutter, that we can't be present focused.
So when we look at balancing extremes, the gift and that is they can help define each other's limits. And if you're working with any extremes in your life, a beautiful way to figure out what your limits are is just to draw a spectrum and your journal. And whatever issue or topic you're working with, make a on the right side, what happens when it goes too far. And it's not healthy. And like what's one extreme and on the left side right down the other.
So if we were going to do the spectrum for when do we receive and sit still, and wait and be patient, we might put on the side of that extreme that it is too much when we start to feel stuck or stagnant and we're terrified to even try anything new. And so we don't do anything at all and we're really masking a fear of change. And on the other side of that extreme might be too much movement. And what happens when we're always efforting and moving and taking action and we don't know the quality of stillness sort of the gift of receptivity.
And so on that side, we might put burnout, always trying to control things, always trying to do things doesn't know how to slow down and just ride the wave of life. And so if you are working with anything in your life that you want to find balance on, just make your own scales, make your own little spectrum of it, and explore what are the limits there for you, and when does it go from being healthy and to unhealthy, and just get a sense of where you might want to bring more balance and temperance into your life.
The last point I wanted to share today is that regardless of what we do, the greater process of life is always moving towards balance, it is always moving towards wellness in equilibrium. Life itself might be chaotic, it might be unpredictable, there might be a lot of energies and conflicting qualities, and essences that we smack into on our human journey that seem like they are fighting against one another or pulling us in different directions. But if we observe nature, nature is always moving towards wholeness in some shape, or form.
And so when we observe the natural world, and how it tries to heal itself, how ecosystems try and rebalance themselves, how, if something's been destroyed, new life comes back in something often grows. From there, we actually see this really beautiful principle where nature takes this middle road. And instead of doing an either or all the time, it always moves towards wellness. And in many systems, principles, systems themselves, family systems, couples, relationships, they move towards wellness, the universe is moving towards wholeness and wellness.
And when we think about being under the umbrella of that greater energy, then I always have the reassurance that even if we are not doing such a good job at temperance in our own life, life will keep giving us opportunities to move us forward and try and move us into greater wholeness, and bring balance in where we might need to slow down. Now I often think it's easier when we can have the wisdom to recognize that we need to show some self restraint, or take a breath or balance things out.
[22:21] Trust life's flow towards balance, peace, and love.
Because if it gets to the point where life is showing us the way, then sometimes we might not always like life's interventions. But I do think we can rest assured that no matter what we're doing, our life itself is moving towards wellness. And our journey is moving towards wholeness. It's moving towards this middle road of learning how to work with opposing forces, and opposing energies and our life.
And so we can know that we can rest in the cradle of life's hand and just rest in the flow. So you don't have to overthink temperance. You don't have to overthink. How do I bring my life into greater balance, come up with a few ideas and then let it go and live your life. And we can absolutely trust that life itself is moving towards a space of calmness and peace and equanimity. And it's moving towards temperance and helping us balance both our light and our dark, the sun and the moon receptivity and action oriented, the divine masculine and the divine feminine.
And what it is to be both a spiritual being and a human being. And working with all of these conflicting energies that seem like they counter one another. But really, if we can change our perspective, and make space for them and realize that it's not either or it's all of it. It's an and joins all of it. And so we can put all of it in a big giant circle, no matter how contradictory it seems.
And know that that big giant circle represents the whole of who we are. And that giant circle is part of the crater circle and cycle of life. And that is the whole of all that is and ultimately all of that is just moving us towards love. All right, thank you so much for joining me for this archetype of the taro episode where we explored all things temperance. Next week we have a mental health toolbox episode and we will be looking at some juicy topic having to do with our mental well being. Until then have an amazing week. Be well. Be Love, be you and be magic.
You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life