Samekh is the Hebrew letter associated with Temperance. Most sources say that its original meaning is tent peg, or support. But the letter itself is round, in fact the cursive figure for samekh is a circle.Samekh It looks nothing like a tent peg.The Wikipedia article on Samekh points out that the Phonecian pictograph for Samekh looks a djedbit more like a tent peg and is probably derived from the Egyptian djed, the pillar shaped hieroglyph that means stability.
So how is a circle like a tent peg? They didn’t just make this stuff up. Well, yeah, they did, but what was the method in their divine madness? The mystic interpretation of the letter samekh given by most sources is “the endless cycle”, which does match the shape of the letter. The endless cycle is something my pagan brain can grab onto. Pagans and Hebrews both see the universe as moving in circles. Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, 1863-1950 said it best:
Everything the power of the world does,
is done in a circle.
The sky is round
and I have heard that the earth
is round like a ball,
and so are all the stars.
The wind in its’ greatest power whirls.
Birds make their nests in circles;
for their’s is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and
goes down again in a circle.
The moon does the same
and both are round.
Even the seasons form a great circle
in their changing
and always come back
to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle,
from childhood to childhood.
and so it is with everything
where power moves.
Our bodies and psyches are exquisitely in sync with these cycles. They resonate deep inside us and lay down a set of reference points to guide us and reassure us that everything is proceeding according to precedent. Like the lesson of Temperance, they help us equilibrate and balance our lives with what is happening around us. In other words, they support us, like that tent peg.
Sagittarius, the fiery, mutable astrological sign that rules the thighs and hips that support our bodies, also corresponds to Temperance. Like the tarot card, the centaur is balancing two extremes, the animal nature of a horse and the intelligence and spirituality of a man. In Greek mythology, centaurs were adventurous, brave, and wise; they were also given to brawling and uncivilized behavior. And, like the card, the centaur is combining those extremes to take aim at and achieve higher goals. Sagittarius is the sign of religion, faith, and philosophy, the only things that will support us when we are trapped between Death and the Devil. To be continued…
Temperance Fountains like Portland's Benson Bubblers sprang up all over the US. Simon Benson donated the fountains to the city in 1912 in hopes that if someone was thirsty they would drink from a fountain instead of heading for the nearest bar. This one is in front of Benson High School.When Temperance appears in a reading it’s not uncommon for the querent to groan and say, “I’m not giving up alcohol!” I assure him that the tarot card has nothing to do with the Temperance Movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, which eventually led to the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919. The Amendment made consumption, possession, or manufacture of most alcoholic beverages illegal, except for medicinal purposes. The initial intent of the American Temperance Movement was to moderate the alarming increase in alcohol consumption that began after the Civil War—hence the name Temperance. But the movement eventually started advocating total abstinence as the more radical members seized control. Abstinence may also have been encouraged because, even back then, I have no doubt that reformers knew that it is impossible for alcoholics to moderate their drinking; they have to stop completely. And so “total abstinence from alcoholic beverages” is now the second or third definition of the word temperance, whose first definition is moderation.
So, if Temperance appears in your reading it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a glass of wine with your dinner. However, it may be suggesting that you don’t drink the whole bottle.
But it’s hard to believe that all the symbolism of this card adds up to just moderation. There’s much more there (See Temperance I). I searched and searched for another definition of temperance and finally found one that opened up possibilities. The hyperdictionary defines it as “the act of tempering.”
The verb temper has several meanings. The ones that follow do the best job of describing the tarot card:
to bring to a suitable state by mixing in or adding a usually liquid ingredient.” This is exactly what the angel on the card is doing. The wording of the definition implies that temperance is an act of trial and error, a messy inexact procedure that takes time and patience. In his print, Temperance, Pieter Breugel shows a woman who looks suspiciously like the tarot angel without wings standing in the midst of scientists, craftsmen, scholars, and musicians. Breugel was illustrating “The New Learning,” a concept of his time that maintained that knowledge should not be gained just from books, but by practical experience and information sharing among a number of disciplines. The woman, or Temperance is encouraging this communication, which in turn will generate new discoveries. But in the process, lots of toes will get stepped on and there will be many arguments and misunderstandings. She is truly in between Death and the Devil. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1560 print of Temperance
to heat treat a blade or piece of steel by reheating it to a temperature well below the temperature at which the steel was made. The blade is kept at this temperature for a while, then it is quenched. Most bladesmiths temper a blade several times to get the exact level of hardness. The idea is that the metal is hard enough to maintain an edge but not so hard that it is brittle, which can cause it to chip or crack.
1. The game can be easy or hard depending on the cards you are dealt.
2. You have no control over the cards you are dealt.
3. A game may look hard, but if you make the right choices, it becomes easy.
4. A game may look easy, but if you make the wrong choices, it becomes hard.
5. Sometimes you have to start again…and again…and again.
6. You can’t win them all no matter how hard you try. Get over it.
7. There are no bad cards. Whether a card is good or bad depends on where it winds up in the spread.
8. When the game is difficult, a little help from a friend either puts things right or at least reassures you that you are not totally stupid because he couldn’t do it either.
9. It’s just a game. Enjoy it.
10. When the cat jumps up on your lap it is always a good idea to take time out from the game and snuggle him.
One of my first tarot teachers was fond of saying, “Always remember that Temperance stands in between Death and The Devil.”
That angel may look calm and serene, but he/she is struggling to reconcile opposites. He/she is a hermaphrodite, with one foot on stable land (consious mind) and the other in a pool of water (subconscious mind). On his/her breast is a triangle (creativity) inside a square (stability). On his/her left are two (polarity) irises. Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow, a symbol of promise and diversity. On his/her right is a single path to mountains topped with a golden crown, a symbol of success, but only if one keeps to that single path. The previous card is Death—transformation through letting go of the material world or the perceived status quo. The next card is The Devil—faith in materialism or the perceived status quo. The central image of the card is two cups. But they aren’t just sitting there being apart, aloof, or quarrelsome; the angel is pouring the contents of one into the other, taking two different things, blending them, and coming up with a new and more useful or beautiful substance.
Like so many other major arcana cards (The Hierophant The Lovers, The Chariot, The Devil, The Moon, The Star, and Judgement) Temperance has a theme of three, two opposite or different things and a third, central thing. In Temperance’s case, the two opposites, (thesis and antithesis) are combined in the central image of one cup pouring into the other (synthesis).
Image by CettaBut this process is not anywhere near as simple as the card makes it look. Yin and yang don’t mix easily. When hot air mixes with cold air hurricanes and tornadoes happen and every tragic and tempestuous love story is about the mixing of male and female. But through trial and error, hard work, and the all-important miracle, things can work out. Rain falls and nourishes crops, the sun shines, and yes, there are even happy families. In his Thoth deck, Aleister Crowley calls this card Art, not Temperance, because the above process is very similar to the creative act. There is the magical moment of inspiration, but the rest, as they say, is perspiration. Others have suggested that the arduous discipline of Alchemy, which links practical chemistry to spiritual/magical transformation, might also be a good name for this card. From the Thoth deck
If I were to choose one card to represent the Occupy movement, it would be Temperance. The movement’s goal is seemingly impossible: to unite the Democratic and Republican people into a force that will transform the present government policy into a new and improved policy that will insure the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for everyone, not just the wealthy. Not only will this require blood, sweat, and tears, but also a miracle or two. And one of those miracles will be Love. Temperance To be continued…
When Death appears in a tarot reading things suddenly get very serious. The querent’s warm, happy feelings about having someone tell him all about himself vanish and dread settles in. He reaches out and touches the card. “This doesn’t look good,” he says. The reader swoops in with the comforting words, “This card doesn’t actually mean death, it means transformation.”
About thirty years ago, Death appeared as a future card in a friend’s reading. I reassured him that the card “just” meant that he would experience a life-altering transformation.
A week later his father died.
But this is the only time in all my years of reading tarot that Death has actually predicted a physical death—at least to my knowledge. I have no way of knowing what happened to the strangers I’ve read for who pulled Death. This is one reason I really like reading for people I don’t know.
So, if it almost always signifies transformation and not physical death, why not call the card Transformation and spare the querent all the drama?
Because that wouldn’t be playing fair. Transformation is high drama and it doesn’t just happen out of the blue. For any true change to occur, something needs to die and fall away. If the Death card appears in a reading, change is inevitable, the querent is going to lose a part of his life. The process can be slow and excruciatingly painful or quick and joyous. It mostly depends on how hard he tries to hang on to the thing that’s dying. The reader’s job is to be a cheerleader and convince him to let go, embrace the transformation, and get on with the rest of his life. He needs to be reminded that he is the hero in his own journey, and transformation is the difficult but necessary means to becoming the best person he can be. But that first step into the unknown is always terrifying.
In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy loses her old life. It literally falls away from her as the tornado carries her house to the Land of Oz. Although she’s terrified, she embraces her new life and does what she can to get home. In the process, she transforms into a more capable, complex character who will be able to cope with whatever Kansas throws at her. But to gain this experience, she had to let go.
In his book The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers Christopher Vogler agrees with the Major Arcana and places Death in the middle of the journey. He calls this the central crisis point or ordeal. The hero is faced with the thing he fears most, which is often death, and manages to survive where all others have failed. He does this by using skills he has learned from his mentor and/or through co-operation with allies. But he doesn’t just escape with his life; this close encounter with death changes him and the way he sees the world and deals with it throughout the rest of the journey, and it gives him the ability to meet the challenges of the final climax.
The story of Perseus and Andromeda is a perfect example. Polydectes, the King of Seriphos, falls in love with Perseus’s mother and presses her to marry him. But she is in love with Dictys, Polydectes’ brother, and so Perseus opposes the marriage. To be rid of Perseus, A home improvement store in Panama City, Florida specializing in stone sculpturePolydectes sends him off to kill the dreaded Medusa, whose hair is a mass of writhing serpents and whose slightest glance turns men to stone. No one has ever returned from Medusa’s cave.
Perseus wisely consults Athena before heading off on his deadly mission. She gives him a polished shield and tells him how to go about assembling all the other stuff he’ll need. The Hesperides give him a knapsack to safely contain Medusa’s head, Zeus gives him an adamantine sword, Hades gives him his helm of invisibility, and Hermes loans Perseus his winged sandals. Cellini's Perseus: Those spiral thingies coming out of Medusa's head and body are her blood that gushed out on the earth and created Pegasus, reminding us of the death/transformation/creation cycle.
Perseus uses Hermes’ sandals to fly to Medusa’s awful lair. Hundreds of men wearing expressions of terror surround the entrance. They are all made of stone. Walking backwards into the cave, he catches her reflection in Athena’s shield, whacks off her head with Zeus’s sword, and shoves it in the Hesperides’ knapsack. When Medusa’s sisters come after him he escapes by donning Hades’ helm of invisibility and flying away.
This triumph over certain death is the crisis point of the story. It transforms Perseus, giving him the ability and self-confidence to succeed at the final climax of the story. Andromeda’s parents, the king and queen of Ethiopia, have chained her to the rocks as a sacrifice to Cetus, a horrible sea monster. Because of his past experience, Perseus is able to kill the monster and save the maiden. Death can also appear in the hero’s journey as an ally, a mentor, a shadow, a gatekeeper, or even a hero. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book, Reaper Man, Death gets depressed as he ponders existentialism and his Discworld bosses decide that it’s time for him to retire. While Death is having the time of his life putting his scythe to a whole new use, chaos reigns in Discworld. Widdle Poons, the oldest wizard on the faculty of Unseen University has been looking forward to his death for quite some time. He’s tired of his same ol’ same ol’ life and is longing for a fresh start in the afterlife. But it’s not happening. Death has retired. An enraged Widdle leads an army of the undead and unemployed off to find Death and put him back to work.
Without Death there would be no point to the hero’s journey at all. There would be no monsters to slay, no fears to overcome, and no need or reason for transformation. In fact, without Death, life itself would be fairly pointless.
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.
Death comes on silent wings.
Click here for an amazing video of an Eagle owl swooping in on its prey.
Tomorrow night is Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s Eve; or the Christian All Hallows Eve. The time, as a Scottish prayer says, of “ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night.” A time, as I’m sure you’ve heard ad nauseum, when the veil between the worlds grows thinnest. A perfect time to talk about Death.
The tarot Death card is macabre enough to satisfy even the Gothiest of Goths. It almost always features a skeleton. In the RWS version, Death is astride his traditional pale horse. Other decks show death swinging a scythe and reaping a field of heads and hands and feet. But the message of the Death card is actually quite uplifting.
The Hebrew letter nun signifies Death. Nun’s meaning is fish, an ancient symbol of fecundity and reproduction. The early Christians chose the fish or vesica piscis as the icon of their new religion because it symbolizes that fertile threshold between the material world and the divine. It is also a perfect metaphor for Death.
Scorpio, the sign of sex, drugs, death, and rock and roll, is, not surprisingly, associated with the Death card. A Scorpio’s goal in life is to get beyond the mundane and discover what it’s really all about; and she will embrace anything that will help her go there. Scorpio rules the reproductive organs, underlining yet again the close association between death and rebirth. Hades Pluto (or Hades), the lord of the underworld, and Mars, the god of war, are Scorpio’s planets. Both are intimately associated with death.
We used our compost bin to explain death to our children. We fill the bin with dead leaves, kitchen scraps, dead plants, grass clippings, and other dead stuff and it becomes the most alive thing in the garden, full of bacteria and fungus and insects that in turn die and feed other bacteria and fungus and insects, etc. The whole thing eventually transforms into fertile compost that will grow more plants that will provide nourishment and beauty for us and more material for the compost bin. Without death and transformation there can be no life.
The message of death is that you can’t take it with you. When you get to that threshold you must drop everything. Death is a transformation, a change from one thing into another. When you die your physical body falls away from your bones and your life here on earth is finished, you must leave it behind if you want to continue your journey. This is true of any transformation. Something must be given up or sacrificed before lasting change can take place. I think that the Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, and Temperance describe this process. Life happens (The Wheel). There are consequences (Justice). We choose to sacrifice ourselves (The Hanged Man) and die (Death) so that we may transform (Temperance) into something better.
Death is not optional, we all must eventually die. But facing the consequences of our mistakes, sacrificing our pride and our predjudice, and transforming into a better person is.
Or
JAMES BOND: What do you expect me to do, Goldfinger?
GOLDFINGER: Why, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
From Goldfinger screenplay by
Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn
We are all expected to die. We don’t know when. We don’t know where. We don’t know how. And we don’t know what, if anything, will happen afterward. The only thing we know for certain is that it is the end of life on earth as we know it.
So if it’s the end, why isn’t Death the last of the major arcana cards? If the card has a number, it is always 13, that most infamous of integers. Even today many buildings do not possess a thirteenth floor, and otherwise sane citizens look over their shoulders a bit more often whenever Friday the 13th rolls around. It’s not an auspicious number, but it’s not the last number, which is 21, The World, completion. According to the tarot, Death is not the end.
Since the major arcana cards outline the story of the hero’s journey, this means that Death falls in the center of the story, not the end. The hero must die so he can be reborn as a new and improved person capable of overcoming the forces arrayed against him. This ordeal usually takes the form of a near death or a crisis that he fears as much if not more than death. It shatters him completely. But during this dark night of the soul a magical transformation happens, leaving the hero with new abilities or a different point of view. But this usually isn’t the final climax of the story. The transformed hero must still complete his mission.
This spiritual death and rebirth theme is, of course, central to many spiritual practices. Christianity is the example that comes most quickly to the western mind, but it is also the purpose of a shamanic initiation. Artist Harriette Frances documented an LSD experience during a psychedelic experiment at Menlo Park, California.
In his book, Serpent in the Sky, John Anthony West describes the initiation of a shaman of the eastern Siberian Yakout tribe: “A Yakout shaman, Sofron Zatayev, affirms that customarily the future shaman dies and spends three days without food and drink. Formerly one was subjected to a thrice-performed ceremony during which he was cut in pieces. Another shaman, Pyorty Ivanov, told us about this ceremony in detail: the members of the candidate were detached and spearated with an iron hook, the bones were cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body liquids thrown away and the eyes torn out of their sockets. After this operation the bones were reassembled and joined with iron. According to another shaman, the dismembering ceremony lasted three to seven days: during this time the candidate remained in suspended animation, like a corpse, in a solitary place.” West, 146, from Robert Lafont in Encyclopedies des Mystiques.
The initiate is literally stripped to the bone, dismembered, and put back together. He must die to his old life so that he can become fit to be reborn into a new and better one. Death, transformation, and rebirth can happen once or many times, and not just at the end of this life. It is the way the soul grows and becomes stronger; it is the way a hero overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
According to the tarot, Death teaches us how to live heroic, inspired lives that bring joy and justice to a struggling world. Death, by o8LadyOfShadows8o
Samekh is the Hebrew letter associated with Temperance. Most sources say that its original meaning is tent peg, or support. But the letter itself is round, in fact the cursive figure for samekh is a circle.
madness? The mystic interpretation of the letter samekh given by most sources is “the endless cycle”, which does match the shape of the letter. The endless cycle is something my pagan brain can grab onto. Pagans and Hebrews both see the universe as moving in circles. Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, 1863-1950 said it best:
