Exploring one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance (sobriety or hygiene), and Justice.

[The image: The higher vessel exchanging with the lower, or perhaps the reverse—an unbroken circuit of transformation. Gurdjieff might call it a depiction of reciprocal feeding. Cynthia Bourgeault might call it kenotic flow, the dance of self-emptying and replenishment.]

Yeshua’s Teaching on Balance

Attachment to matter gives birth to passion without an Image of itself because it is drawn from that which is contrary to its higher nature. The result is that confusion and disturbance resonates throughout one’s whole being. It is for this reason that I told you to find contentment at the level of the heart, and if you are discouraged, take heart in the presence of the Image of your true nature.

Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Dialogue One

The Nature of Temperance as Balance

“It is a just measure in the relationship between the image and the likeness which has to be guarded and which is, in fact, guarded by the guardian Angel. This is why tradition has given the name Temperance to the fourteenth Arcanum of the Tarot. For it is a matter here of the measure in the fluidic relationship between the image and the likeness which is necessary for life and health.

Just measure in the fluidic relationship between the absolute radicalism of the monad (the image) and the relativism of the phenomenal personality (the likeness) constitutes the fundamental principle of spiritual, psychic and corporeal health. This measure amounts to an always changing equilibrium between eternity and the moment, between the absolute and the relative, between contemplation and action, between the ideal and the phenomenal.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p386.

“Does not the totality of the Card, the Angel of the Card, suggest the problem of cooperating polarity, or integrated duality? Does it not first of all suggest the presentiment or suspicion that perhaps it is thanks to the two wings, the two arms, the two colors of the robe, the two vases, that the water pours forth?…that this water is the fruit and the gift of the ‘both-and’ of integrated duality, which jumps to one’s attention as one looks at the Card?” Meditations on the Tarot, p374

The Spiritual Exercise of Temperance

“Temperance, as a spiritual exercise, signifies the task of knowing the relationship between the image or monad, the likeness or phenomenal personality, and the guardian Angel or individual grace. This means to say that one should find the source, current and direction of inner life—in grasping its nature and role—and work and live in conformity with this knowledge.” Meditations on the Tarot, p387.

The Practice of Temperance in Daily Life

“Keep your sobriety and do this by not over-identifying, not allowing the emotional center to get too indiscriminately mixed up in reactivity.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 4:06 Day 1c Evening Session.

“You can begin to develop this daily hygiene of bringing your atmosphere into equilibrium, into order, into quietness, and tasting your own freedom—tasting who you are when you’re stable, spacious, and non-instrumental in your consciousness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 50:00 Day 2b Afternoon Teaching.

“I prefer to err on the side of sobriety and of a general rule when people are stepping across the plank into the Imaginal realm, which is more unbounded, which means you’re not quite as sure all the time where your feet are on the ground and what’s real and what’s not real, that it’s really important to have a good, strong grounding in everyday reality and everyday responsibility.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 55:25 19 Wed eve QA.

“If there’s one practice that I’d encourage you to work with until we meet again in some form or another, it’s that hygiene of conscience, the awakening again and again in your moment of life. Conscience, in your pondering, what does this mean? How does one act out of conscience? What’s the difference in flavor? What’s the cost?” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2020 Gurdjieff-Teilhard II, 1:17:11 020-Conscious Circle of Humanity.

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Logion 108
Yeshua says...
Whoever drinks what flows from my mouth
will come to be as I am
and I also will come to be as they are,
so that what is hidden will become manifest.

Logion 22
Yeshua noticed infants nursing
and said to his students,
"These little ones taking milk
are like those on their way into the kingdom."
So they asked him,
"If we too are 'little ones'
are we on our way into the kingdom?"
Yeshua replied,
"When you are able to make two become one,
the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside,
the higher like the lower,
so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female,
but male and female become a single whole;
When you are able to fashion an eye to replace an eye,
and form a hand in place of a hand, or a foot for a foot,
making one image supersede another --
then you will enter in."

Logion 50
Yeshua says...
Suppose you are asked,
"Where have you come from?"
say, "We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, "Are you that Light?"
say, "We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father."
If you are questioned,
"But what is the sign of the Source within you?"
say, "It is movement and it is rest."

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Quotations from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.