Temperance, the Hermit, and the hourglass

As I pointed out in last year's post "First thoughts on Temperance," the image on the Temperance card -- liquid being poured from one vessel to another -- is conceptually similar to an hourglass, and that an hourglass has actually been used elsewhere as a symbol of that virtue.

Detail from Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
Allegory of Good Government (1338)

Lorenzetti's painting is in fact the earliest known depiction of an hourglass -- and it is captioned Tenperantia (cf. the spelling Tenperance used in most old Marseille decks).

If we look at the hourglass as a symbol of time itself (tempus), the narrow neck in the center represents the present moment. The lower chamber, full of sand which has already passed through that neck, corresponds to the past; and the upper chamber is the future.

Now compare this to the Tarot image of Temperance.

Pierre Madenié (1709)

The angel of Temperance is pouring water from the vessel in her left hand (our right) into the one in her right (our left). Since the original image is of pouring water into wine to dilute it, the upper vessel contains water, and the lower one contains wine. The upper vessel corresponds to the upper chamber of the hourglass, which has the form of an inverted triangle -- the alchemical symbol for Water. The upright triangle of the lower chamber is the alchemical symbol for Fire (with which wine is associated). If we add horizontal lines through the triangles, we have the alchemical symbols for Earth and Air. Just as the angel of Temperance is pouring Water into wine (Fire), an hourglass pours sand (Earth) into an "empty" chamber (Air).

Notice that the grains of sand in the upper chamber of an hourglass move toward the center, while those in the lower chamber move away from the center. In the Aristotelian schema (from On Generation and Corruption), centripetal motion is associated with the Cold elements of Water and Earth, and centrifugal motion with the Hot elements of Fire and Air.

Fire and Air are masculine elements, while Water and Earth are feminine. In the hourglass, and in the vessels of Temperance, we have a sort of reverse-insemination symbolism, with the masculine vessel passively receiving material from the feminine. In the hourglass, this inversion is explicit: the only reason an hourglass works at all is that it artificially inverts the natural arrangement, putting Earth above Air; the motion of the sand is gravity's gradual rectification of this unnatural state of affairs. Notice that both in Lorenzetti's painting and on the Tarot card, the receptive vessel is held in the masculine right hand; and on the card, the other vessel (I can't think of an appropriate antonym for receptive) is held in the feminine left hand.

If the upper vessel represents the future and the lower vessel the past, the main difference between the hourglass and the Temperance image is the present. In the hourglass, as in our common conception of time, the present is where the future and the past meet, and it approximates a dimensionless geometric point. On the Temperance card, the two vessels are separated, and the present -- no longer dimensionless -- corresponds to the stream of water flowing between them. Temperance. The present has been expanded from a point to a line. Our ordinary perception of time is as a line bisected by a point present, but occasionally (mostly in the dreaming state), we have access to the higher-dimensional perspective of meta-time: a time plane bisected by a linear present -- a meta-present which embraces the entire timeline of ordinary experience. (I have posted about this many times; search my blogs for the name Dunne.) In my 2018 post "As the heavens are higher than the earth," I interpret the "higher" perspective referred to by Isaiah as being dimensionally higher.

One sense in which the heavens are higher than the earth is in their higher dimensionality. Strictly speaking, of course, the earth is a spheroid and is just as three-dimensional as the heavens, but the earth as experienced by man is essentially a two-dimensional surface, which is why it is often convenient to represent it with two-dimensional maps. The heavens, in contrast are fully and irreducibly three-dimensional, such that no two-dimensional map would be a close enough approximation to be of any use.

Human thoughts and ways tend to be limited to three spatial dimensions, with the fourth dimension experienced as “time.” God, who is eternal rather than temporal, can be conceptualized as thinking and working (at minimum) “one dimension up” — using the fifth dimension as time, which enables him to see our whole four-dimensional continuum as “present.”

But just as the earth is not truly two-dimensional, human thought and experience is not truly limited to the “temporal” (meaning the perspective from which the fourth dimension is “time”). Just as we can sometimes look down from a mountaintop or an airplane, using the third dimension to get a wider-than-usual view of the two-dimensional surface on which we live and perhaps an inkling of the perspective of “the heavens,” so can we sometimes attain a fleeting glimpse of the higher-dimensional (“eternal”) perspective of God.

These "fleeting glimpses" of the perspective from which the present is not a point but a line -- can they not be symbolized by an hourglass with the two chambers drawn apart, a flowing stream taking the place of the point-like neck? And don't the angel's wings and eye-like headdress also suggest this "higher perspective"?

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If hourglass imagery is implicit in Temperance, it was explicit in the card now known as the Hermit but originally called il Gobbo, il Vecchio, or il Tempo (the Hunchback, the Old Man, or Time). Like the figure in the Lorenzetti painting, the Old Man carried an hourglass, holding the lower chamber in his right hand.

Visconti-Sforza (mid 15th century)

When what presumably began as a copying error transformed the hourglass into a lantern, this character developed into the Hermit of the Tarot de Marseille and his close cousin, the Capuchin of the Tarot de Besançon. (Even some decks that call him the Hermit make an exception to their standard eight-color palette to give him the characteristic brown robe of a Capuchin friar. Historically, the Capuchin style of dress was a deliberate homage to that of the Camaldolese Hermits.)

Pierre Madenié (1709), Johan Jerger (1801)

The Rider-Waite card generally follows this model, deviating from it as described by Waite in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.

The variation from the conventional models in this card is only that the lamp is not enveloped partially in the mantle of its bearer, who blends the idea of the Ancient of Days with the Light of the World. It is a star which shines in the lantern. I have said that this is a card of attainment, and to extend this conception the figure is seen holding up his beacon on an eminence. Therefore the Hermit is not, as Court de Gebelin explained, a wise man in search of truth and justice; nor is he, as a later explanation proposes, an especial example of experience. His beacon intimates that "where I am, you also may be."

Waite writes the Hermit's number not as VIIII but as IX -- the Greek initials of Jesus Christ -- a decision perhaps not unrelated to his identification of the Hermit with the title "Light of the World" (John 8:12) and with the saying "where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:3).

The most interesting feature of the Rider-Waite Hermit in the present context, though, is that "it is a star which shines in the lantern" -- specifically, a six-pointed star, or hexagram.

The hexagram in the lantern is interesting for two reasons. First, it reintroduces the hourglass's symbolism of the two opposing elemental triangles.

As shown above, Temperance and the Hermit take the hourglass symbolism in opposite directions. In Temperance, the two chambers of the glass are separated and moved farther apart, expanding the point that connects them (the punctal present of object time) into a stream (the linear present of meta-time). In the Hermit, the two chambers overlap and interpenetrate.

What this could mean in terms of time is hard to make out. While the Temperance image features a linear present -- an extensive region which is neither past nor present -- the hexagram has instead a large two-dimensional region which is both past and present whatever that could mean! So far I have not been able to find any coherent symbolism in this.

The other reason the Rider-Waite star-in-the-lantern image is interesting is that it is a link to the Star card, which in turn is obviously closely related to Temperance.

Marseille decks invariably have eight-pointed stars, and Waite follows that tradition, but in Switzerland the number of points was somewhat variable. Besançon decks often have five-pointed stars, and one deck (only one that I know of) actually has hexagrams like the one in the lantern of Waite's Hermit.

François Héri, Solothurn 1730

I find the Star to be one of the very most enigmatic Tarot trumps, the origin of its iconography a mystery. I suppose it must have come from depictions of the constellation Aquarius -- often shown pouring out two water jugs in Medieval zodiacs -- but in the context of the Tarot deck the similarity to the Temperance image must be intentional and must have some meaning. I have connected Temperance with the Hermit by way of the shared hourglass imagery, and Waite's Hermit completes the triangle by connecting the Hermit with the Star.

I am not yet sure what to make of these connections, but I think in the future I will have to contemplate these three trumps together.