Maroon Tarot's Image for Temperance
You know, I hadn’t really thought about this until I saw your question and it got me to thinking. Why could a hummingbird feeding from a flower relate to Temperance?
The image on the card seems to catch a moment in time when the “perfect balance” or the “precise mixture” is just about to be achieved (it looks to me as if the bird is poised, just about to drink from the flower.) On the level of two organisms, it shows what balance or combination much be achieved (on any number of levels) for things to “work right.”
The bird needs the nectar that the flower offers and the flower needs the bird to assist in pollination. Each organism is born and develops separately and then comes together in “perfect order” for a moment in time when everything is working “just the way it should.”
If you think about what has to happen to have this all come together, it really is amazing. The flower’s seed must survive and germinate and grow to the right stage in its life to be ready for pollination. The bird must hatch and survive and develop into an adult bird capable of extracting nectar. There have to be the right population (in number and kind) of flowers and hummingbirds. Then at one precise moment they come together, almost to form a third entity, a different combination, if only for a moment – and that combination is exquisitely “just right.” And maybe that is one idea or “snapshot” of Temperance.
This card – with its image from nature - makes me think about another example from nature and how the balance of things can be tipped, and also sometimes restored, with patience, compassion and reconciliation. With the wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone Park biologists discovered balances within the ecosystem there that we (humans) had not even been aware of. For a period of around 80 years the wolf did not inhabit the park, having been eradicated by man from that ecosystem. After the wolf was reintroduced in the late 1990’s we discovered that certain plant and fish populations benefited. It was found that when the wolf was absent the elk were consuming many of the smaller aspen trees and many of the willow bushes that grew close to the rivers. With the wolf gone, the elk lived in the park with very few natural predators and were free to browse almost anywhere. Because of this, there was less vegetation at the river bank and thus there was less shelter and shade for fish - and fewer fish and their offspring were able to survive. When the wolf was brought back to the park and began to prey upon the elk again an order - a fruitful combination, a beautiful balance - was restored.
For me, that brings perhaps another aspect of Temperance to mind – that of moderation. You have to have the right number of elk and wolves. The wolves cannot take too many elk or they will starve in the end; the elk need the wolves to keep their numbers to the correct level or they will starve (too many elk for their range.) Temperance is also perhaps about wise management, compromise, and give and take. You can’t take too much or too little – Temperance, perhaps, could be understanding how much to give or take in any given situation.
An ecosystem, of course, is only one example of a way you could think about some of the qualities of Temperance. But the image on the Temperance card from the Maroon Tarot Deck got me to thinking of Temperance in terms of nature and how nature can illuminate supernatural or spiritual truths. It makes me think of “As above, so below.” (Or maybe vice versa!)