Temperance in 7 decks
The same card as 7 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A winged angel in a white robe stands with one foot on land and one in a pool, pouring water between two cups in a stream that seems to flow upward. A triangle inside a square marks the angel's chest and a sun glows on the forehead. A path winds from the pool toward distant mountains and a rising sun; irises grow at the water's edge.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A winged woman with a yellow flower in her grey hair pours liquid between two yellow jugs, one held high and one low. She wears a grey and blue gown, red sleeves and a yellow bodice with a red sash. Low hills and a yellow plant show behind her. Numbered XIIII, titled TEMPERANCE.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A winged angel in a white robe stands with one foot on land and one in a pool, pouring water between two cups in a stream that seems to flow upward. A triangle inside a square marks the angel's chest and a sun glows on the forehead. A path winds from the pool toward distant mountains and a rising sun; irises grow at the water's edge.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A winged woman with a yellow flower in her grey hair pours liquid between two yellow jugs, one held high and one low. She wears a grey and blue gown, red sleeves and a yellow bodice with a red sash. Low hills and a yellow plant show behind her. Numbered XIIII, titled TEMPERANCE.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
Numbered XIIII, a crowned woman in a red and dark gown pours liquid from a jug into a vase on the ground. A yellow scroll curls beside her lettered with what reads as FAMA and VOL, and her left hand holds a tall staff topped with a feathered knob.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A woman with long fair hair pours from a blue and white jug held up in her right hand into a second jug held low in her left. She wears a blue gown scattered with gold stars over red sleeves, and red stockings. She stands on a flowered green field between dark hills, against flatter gold, with a red band at the foot.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
A man with spikes radiating from his hair looks up with open mouth, holding a long kite-shaped shield patched with red and grey and a pole bearing a red pennant. He wears purple and red, with a helmet at his hip. The name BACHO is at the top and XIIII appears twice.
Sola Busca trumps are named figures matched to the standard trumps by number only.
Oswald Wirth
Oswald Wirth, 1889
A winged angel with fair curly hair and a small gold disc on her forehead pours a stream from one dark vase into another held lower down. She wears a blue bodice and red sleeves over a long red skirt edged in green. A red flower grows at the left. Below are the number 14, LA TEMPERANCE and the Hebrew letter nun.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A woman in a pale kimono with a red sash kneels at a low wooden table in a bamboo grove, eyes closed, pouring steaming liquid from a small pitcher into a bowl. Two white cranes stand behind her and red paper cranes float through the air. Glowing paper lanterns hang among the bamboo, and a temple roof shows through the stalks.