Recovering a Sense of Creative Self-Protection with Temperance
Week Ten of the Tarot Artist's Way...
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This summer, I’m guiding you through a tarot takeover of Julia Cameron’s 12 week creative recovery program, The Artist’s Way. Each Monday, I’ll pair a key theme from the book with a tarot archetype, and share fresh insights on The Artist’s Way’s message, through a tarot lens. Today, we’re diving into Week 10: Recovering a Creative Self-Protection with Temperance.
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Week Ten of our tarot-informed journey through The Artist’s Way challenges us to reflect on how “protecting” ourselves can create barriers to creative freedom.
The Temperance card backs this up, reminding us that there’s a difference between defensiveness and responsiveness, that a sense of openness and awareness can protect us more effectively than the temptation to lock ourselves down.
ICYMI, the replay recording of our latest Tarot Artist’s Way journaling session is here.
Despite this week’s chapter title, Julia Cameron doesn’t seem overly focussed on the idea of “self-protection”. If anything, she seems (rightfully) committed to breaking readers out of the protective walls we build up to guard ourselves from the freewheeling nature of creativity. She wants us to give up the excuses we cling to as we desperately try to evade our inner artist’s invitation to play.
This week’s call to resist creative avoidance in its many forms echoes the sentiments around creative safety from all the way back in Week One: just as we were invited to choose curiosity over comfort in that first week, we’re reminded now — over two months later — that creative living requires us to open ourselves up to the unexpected, push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, and shed our fear of making mistakes (in art and in life) for good.
It was tempting to pair this week — with all its talk of addictions and anxieties — with The Devil card (and I might have, if we hadn’t taken a tangent into Devil terriroty in Week Seven) but in the same way that I don’t really think this week is about self-protection, I don’t think it’s actually about vice, either — and thankfully so, because I don’t love the way Cameron talks about behaviours she percieves as straightforward creative avoidance1.
Luckily, this week also holds a lot of heart. At its best, Week 10 takes the reader beyond the block and reminds us that we’re still on a journey... that set-backs aren’t blocks at all, just momentary sidequests we can return from… that the trail is waiting for us, when we’re ready to get back on our feet… that block is never permanent state… that creative droughts end... and that freeing ourselves to play — even when we feel surrounded by doom and demands — is the secret to a creative life.
So, to highlight the most generous aspects of this week’s guidance, I’ve paired it with Temperance, a card that’s more concerned with thresholds and spaciousness than with barriers and blockages… an archetype that invites us to be fully present with wherever we’re at and whatever we have to hand, rather than throw up defenses against what might or might not happen.
The term ‘temperance’ means moderation. For most people, this means self-control. The Tarot Temperance … does not go to extremes simply because extremes are not necessary. Not an artificial inhibition … but exactly the opposite: a true and proper response to all situations as they arise.
The word ‘temperance’ derives from the Latin ‘temperare’ which means ‘to mix’ or ‘to combine properly’. … Many people can only deal with life by parcelling it off into sections. They create one personality for business and another for their private lives; both are false. They consider certain moments and situations to be ‘serious’ and others to be ‘fun’ and are careful never to smile at a serious subject. … All these separations derive from the inability to take life as it comes, moment by moment, Temerpance combines the elements of life.”
— Rachel Pollack, 78 Degrees of Wisdom
We meet the Temperance Angel a little more than halfway through the Major Arcana sequence. Their journey is far from over, but they’ve taken a pause between Death and the Devil to be present in this transitional moment. They may not be able to hold the Devil and the Tower off forever, but they can camp here, in the momentary peace at the threshold, before forging onward. They can respond with compassion to exactly where they’re at, and they can even allow themselves to play with whatever they have to hand (in the Angel’s case, two goblets).
This, I think, is the true definition of creative self-protection. It’s not thwarting Death, the Devil, the Tower. It’s making space for your creative wellbeing and a sense of play even whilst doom looms.
I don’t think we can fully protect or inoculate ourselves from anxiety, distractions, blocks, droughts, the demands of work and late-stage capitalism and the state of the world at large at large. But even when the walls of the world are closing in, we can seek out the light and air flooding in through the cracks. And we can respond to that light, that air, that opportunity amidst the difficulty. We can commune with our inner artist at those thresholds, and we’ll be better, and bigger, and brighter for having done it.
“Temperance is a call to take a pit stop, to make space for daydreaming and recovery.”
— Tarot for Creativity
Within the text, Cameron quotes Einstein: “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
Later, she describes periods of creative droughts as being “between dreams”.
The betweenness is important here: the Temperance angel occupies a liminal space between dead and destroyed, an opening where we get to be exactly as we are, and in so doing, we have enough of exactly what we need.
And so, I wonder if Cameron might consider a small rewrite: could this chapter be less about “Recovering a Sense of Self Protection” and more about “Recovering a Sense of Creative Spaciousness.”
The short-hand advice guidance I often draw from the Temperance card in my own practice is this: work with what you’ve got. Don’t seek out the ocean before you’ve drunk the water in your hands.
In Week 10 of the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron offers similar advice: work with what you’ve got, even if what you’ve got is anxiety, fear, and vice. “Anxiety is fuel,” she says. “We can use it to write with, paint with, work with.”
Temperance plays a particularly important companion role here because it says “yes: anxiety is fuel, but only if you’ve already got it. If you don’t, don’t go creating it. Look at where you’re at and what you’ve already got to work with: that’s where the creative magic lies. You don’t need to go out searching for your launch pad — you have it. Wherever you go, there you are. Whatever’s already in the well can be drawn upon and drunk. The space is already yours, use it. •
Join me live on Sunday, July 20th at 7pm UK / 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific for a tarot journaling event where we’ll reflect back over the past week and pull cards for creative self-protection.
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