Temperance & The Water Element

Tarot Art by Rann Poisoncage, via DeviantArt.

Element Reflection by Lauren J-A

My journey of the Water Element, nurtured by Angelica flower essence, is evocative of the beautiful, subtle, and numinous mysteries of the archetypal wisdom and medicine of Temperance in Tarot. As a tarot reader, I've personally had various journeys in interpreting this card, especially for my personal readings. I find this coincidence funny, as working with Angelica + deepening my understanding of the Water element enabled me to truly witness and experience Temperance.

Temperance is the card after the infamous Death card. Temperance is the invitation to pause, reconnect, and understand our role as part of a larger, ecosystem of cyclical change. As its name is derived from the Latin root for time, Temperance asks us to slow, to observe, to take witness in our false concept of linear time and perversion with doing, and to instead, be, surrender, and trust in the pure balance and harmony that Divine order of time instead of the seductive of reactive, control-driven human desire for measuring and controlling fate. As one of my teachers, Lindsay Mack says of Temperance, which I think is so fitting for Water and Angelica: "Temperance is the initiation into learning that we are beings who can live on this planet and in this life, in a connection with spirit and the soul rather than the ego."

Water work is soul work, water energetics are the uncomfortable passage of in the hallways and doorways of the dark night of the soul - to be receiving, allowing, trusting, and not being afraid of betraying ourselves and to cultivate a relationship to something we do not yet understand, or have language for, and may never will. It is the radical opportunity to live our lives in a new way, that is free to be designed and governed by the not knowing and by the trusting in its unfolding, and in our capacity to receive.