Illustration by Pamela Colman Smith, 1910. Public domain in the US since 1966 and in the UK since 2021. Vector digitisation of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck by OpenClipart contributor "klaatu-tarot", released public domain.
Temperance
Balance, Moderation, and Alchemy
Waite in 1911 called the title fantastical and renounced the card's conventional meanings, yet his own divinatory list gives economy, moderation and frugality.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), Part II §2, 'Temperance', and Part III §3, card 14
A winged angel, one foot on land and one in water, pours liquid between two cups.
More context
In Pamela Colman Smith's design for Waite's 1910 deck, a winged angel pours from one chalice to another, one foot on earth and one in water. He has the sun on his forehead and a square and triangle on his breast. A path rises to heights on the horizon, where a crown is seen in a great light. Waite, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), says the figure is neither male nor female and pours the essences of life. He renounces the card's conventional emblems and meanings and calls the name fanciful: its rule in consciousness tempers, combines and harmonises the psychic and material natures.
Light
For Waite, the psychic and material natures tempered and harmonised, so that reason glimpses whence we came and whither we are going.
Shadow
Reversed, Waite lists disunion, unfortunate combinations and competing interests, and also things connected with churches, sects and the priesthood.