What it means
An angel stands with one foot on land and one in water, pouring liquid between two cups. A path leads off toward a crown of light in the hills. The pouring never spills. As a birth card Temperance points to a life of mixing: cultures, careers, people with different needs. The old meaning is alchemy, combining ingredients until they turn into something new, and the Golden Dawn links the card with Sagittarius. Temperance people often end up as go-betweens. Their lesson is that moderation is an active skill, a run of small adjustments, and has nothing to do with doing everything halfway.
Strengths
Balance, patience, tact, a healing presence, and a talent for finding a third option when two sides are stuck.
Challenges
Avoiding conflict, blandness in the name of peace, and over-managing everyone's feelings.
With its partner cards
Temperance always comes with the Hierophant as its Soul card. Here the gift for blending rests on a solid base of learning. People with this pair often teach, counsel or mediate, and they tend to respect the rules even while bending them toward what each person needs.
When it is your birth card
Greer's method adds the month, day and full year, then adds the digits until the total is 22 or less. In her terms the higher card of a pair is the Personality card and the lower one the Soul card. Between 1900 and 2030, Temperance is a birth card for 3.5 percent of birthdays. It always comes as the Personality card over the Hierophant, 14 and 5. How often it turns up depends heavily on birth year, since the year makes up almost all of the total: 4.2 percent of birthdays from 1900 to 1959, under 0.1 percent of birthdays from 1960 to 1999 and 6.5 percent of birthdays from 2000 to 2030. For example, someone born on December 31, 1996 adds 12 + 31 + 1996 = 2039, then 2 + 0 + 3 + 9 = 14, then 1 + 4 = 5. That gives Temperance and the Hierophant (14 and 5).
How Cosmic Array reads it
Cosmic Array works out your birth cards from your date of birth alone with Greer's method, so no birth time is needed. The Architect blueprint lists them by name in the same panel as your Life Path, and the two always line up. A set with Temperance always ends in the Hierophant, which goes with a Life Path of 5, because both reduce the same birthday digits.