14 Temperance

I'm skipping over Death for the moment as I want this to be a special story – I have ideas, but none of them feel strong enough yet.

So we move on to Temperance, a card who in the sequence of the Major Arcana feels like That Difficult Bit In The Middle of Side Two - you know there's a gap, you have to fill it somehow, but you're running out of ideas.

The classic picture is of an angelic figure blending two liquids by decanting them from one jar to another. She is alternatively called Alchemy, sometimes Prudence..

Restraint, temperance, justice. Constant mindfulness of others and one's surroundings; practicing self-control, abstention, moderation, zero-sum and deferred gratification. Prudence to judge between actions with regard to appropriate actions at a given time. Proper moderation between self-interest, versus public-interest, and against the rights and needs of others. Alchemy, modern chemistry. All things taken in moderation.

As the seventeenth card, the Star, also has a motif of an angelic woman bearing a vessel of water, it feels as if a measure of un-necessary duplication may be going on here. To disentangle what may be happening here, we need to look at early mediaeval Tarot decks, from the late 1300's. (This is about as far back as the Tarot may reasonably be traced, despite the extravagant claims to Ancient Egypt made by Crowley and the Golden Dawn and others,, who fabricated a greater antiquity by tying their designs into Cabbalistic and ancient Egyptian symbology.)

Early decks exist where all the seven or eight classical Virtues, including Temperance, had their own card. But several of the Virtues have dropped out within the next three hundred years, leaving only Temperance, and the Star (Hope). Perhaps a little bit of Patience loves on in Strength, the motif of the woman of patience subduing the lion of wrath, and qualities of Charity might have been absorbed into the Empress… but eight virtues whittled down to two?

That gives me an idea for a story.

The angel Sandalfoot, High And Glorious Guardian of the Most Holy Caroc (1), felt like he wanted to hang up his halo. Redundancy was always a tricky thing, but having to confront eight Virtues and telling them six of them were now history… he'd consulted the manuals, brought in a box of hankies, and was prepared to say counselling sessions had been arranged with lesser Angels. They were waiting in the anterooms even now, after all.

But this bunch of females did not seem prepared to burst into tears and run out sobbing. In fact, they were getting positively militant about it…

"I know it's hard, but we've got to downsize!" he almost shouted ."We can't sustain eight virtues on the Caroc Cards! The budget's stressed as it is!"

"Oh, yeah?" said Diligencia, cynically. "I know what I'm worth, matey. And I haven't worked my back out of joint just to be kicked out of the group now!"

Sandalfoot backed off from tackling the Virtue of hard work and constant labour.

"Well, somebody like you… you know… should walk into a new job straight away. Crying out for your skills, employers are!"

"Including you?" she asked, hawk-eyed.

"Well..er….at this moment in time… contractions in the workforce…sorry to lose you…." Sandalphon backed away, looking for an easier target.

Ah. Humility. Big self-esteem issues. She'll be a pushover.

"Now you agree we have to make sacrifices? We all have to make sacrifices? And I know you 'll accept the logic that the group is bigger than the individual…"

Humility turned big just-about-to-burst-into-tears eyes to him, and was about to speak when Patience, Kindness and Chastity mobbed him.

"Oi, you, leave her alone! She always gets exploited by the likes of you! And no, Humility, it is not alright. People like you always get the shitty end of the stick from people like him!"

"So why have I got my cards, then. Is Chastity out of fashion all of a sudden?" demanded Chastity, indignant.

"Well, no." said Sandalfoot. He thought quickly. "What with the need to rationalise, we asked the High Priestess to take on a few new lines in her job description…"

"I knew it. Scab!" said Chastity. Caritea, the Virtue of Kindness, backed her up.

"And I bet that's why the bloody Empress is grinning all over her face, she's took my job over! I may be Kindness but I'm not that much of a muggins! Bleedin' royals. Blackleg!"

Sandalfoot realised he'd backed into something hard. A sharp corner was jabbing into his back. He heard water sloshing.

"Bleedin' watch it, will you?" a peeved voice demanded. He turned to confront a rather dishevelled Virtue who was holding a large wine-glass for comfort.

"You nearly spilt her!"

Sandalfoot looked down and saw a large gleaming and bright-blue oyster was occupying the tank, who appeared to be looking balefully at him through the gap in her shell. (2)

He gathered himself together.

"Now surely you two, of all people, can't object to being dropped from the new edition of the Caroc?" he asked. "Fair's fair, nobody remembers what you happen to be Virtues of, any more! And she's been turned into an oyster, anyway."

The dumpy little Virtue rounded on him.

"Izzat our fault? Izzit? As the humans forgot us, so we forgot too. Fact of divinity – we're only as good as their memory of us!"

The wineglass quaffed, all over Sandalfoot's angelic robes. He winced. Red wine, especially Bibulous' finest, took some cleaning.

"Well, yes. But Tubby.."

"The name's Tubso, rent-boy!"

"Tubso. Sorry. We can't have a card for Tubsoniousness in the Deck without being able to provide an explanation as to what it's for. Be reasonable!"

She glared up at him. Sandalfoot ploughed on.

"And she was turned into an oyster. By Epidity, God of Potatoes. For casting a weasel into the shadow of Resonata, Goddess of Ferrets, as I recall…"

"My mate Bissonomy? And she's still technically married to the Great God Blind Io. Had a bonny bouncing goat with him, as I recall! And their goat donated one of his horns to be the Cornucopia. The thing the bloody Empress swans around with as part of her portfolio. So you can be respectful! She wasn't always an oyster, and Io refuses to turn her back…"(3)

The oyster looked up, even more balefully. Sandalfoot took a step back, lest she go for him.

"Now listen!" he shouted. "I've made my mind up. As of Thursday, six of you are redundant! No arguing! The only two, the only two of you, remaining in the Caroc pack, are Temperance and Hope."

Hope has to be triumphant, like a guiding star in a dark night, and Temperance is the only one of the buggers who hasn't given me a hard time. Look at her sitting over there on her own, blissed out on something or other…

"Pru? Prudence, love, wake up. You're in!"

He turned and stormed out. The Virtues looked at each other.

"Well, at least we're all statues in the University library still." said Patience, brightly.

"And just maybe Io's mellowed out by now, enough to give Bissonomy her human shape back?" Hope said, hopefully.

"Maybe we should all go together to talk to him.." mused Charity. "I'm sure I could persuade him to be reasonable about this!"

"Is there any of that wine left? " asked Humility. "I could use a drink. After everyone else has had one, obviously. I wouldn't want to be a bother."

(1) Aleistar Crowley divined that the angel Sandelphon was the guiding intelligence behind the Tarot cards.

(2) Look, given my favourite heavy rock band, I could not leave this out. Any followers of Bissonomy would, by definition, have to be a Blue Öyster Cult. Who sang, in Subhuman: Oyster boys are/Coming for me/ Save me from the/Death-like creatures... (versions are on two LP's: Secret Treaties (1975) and Imaginos (1988))

(3) Tubso and Bissonomy first apear as dubious and forgotten Virtues in Going Postal by Terry the expanded story of the virtue Bissonomy, see Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. God's don't need to give reasons for their actions…