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Friday, April 2, 2021

Tarot Tales: B is for Balance (Temperance)

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!


The card: Temperance

Meanings: Balance, harmony, equilibrium, peace. Things taken in moderation, managing emotions, staying away from extremes. Also stands for mediation, and patiently connecting things that seem to be incompatible. 

Selection process: Water plays an important part in the imagery of this card; water in tarot represents emotions. The figure pouring water from one cup to the other represents emotional balance, which I was trying to find in a story, preferably with also water-based motifs.

The story: Sunset Lad

Origin: Armenia

Summary
:
A young man swears at the Sun for going up and down, and the Sun's mother punishes him with a curse: he dies every morning at sunrise, and only comes back to life when the sun sets. He flees into the wilderness to protect his family from seeing him die every day, and greatly regrets his actions. Eventually he sets out to seek forgiveness from the Sun's mother. He climbs down a well, and meets a giantess who agrees to help him. She shows the young man an underwater passage that leads to the Sun's home, and gives him two cups, one empty, one full of water. When he finds the Sun's mother, he begs her forgiveness, and eventually she agrees to lift the curse. He fills his empty cup, and pours out the other in return, then goes back to the giantess. The giantess bathes him in the Sun's magic water, and the curse is lifted. 
By the time he returns home to his wife and son, the wife has married someone called Sunrise Man. Like civilized adults, they all go on a picnic, and they let the woman choose. She chooses Sunset Lad, her original husband, and they live happily ever after. 


Are you nocturnal? Are you diurnal? Do you keep your night and day in balance? If you had to choose, which one would you keep?

21 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    Oh yes - temperance is indeed about balance... and ties in perfectly with the B post which will appear over at The Roaming Soul To have that balance and self-measuring is a skill that can be practiced. Another delightful tale to illustrate! YAM xx

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  2. Reminds me of “Castaway” where Tom Hanks returns after living on a desert island, only to find his fiancé has married his dentist. She stays with the dentist as I recall. I don’t suppose that is about balance but he does deliver the Fed Ex parcel to its rightful owner so maybe it is.

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  3. I'd keep night, beause then I could sleep. Nice going so far!

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  4. I've always been a night owl, gravitating towards the witching hour and graveyard shift. A few years ago, I had an inverted sleep cycle and would be awake while most people are sleeping. Then I'd go to sleep when most people wake up.

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  5. I would keep the day. I sleep at night anyway, might as well sleep like the dead. Would be better than my frequent insomnia, I gather.

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  6. I like the peaceful moments at night when its quiet especially when I want to do some reading or something where I need to focus. That way early morning , that is a couple of hours before sun rise is beautiful too...
    Interesting story...I dont know much about Tarot cards though I have heard about them

    https://pagesfromjayashree.blogspot.com/2021/04/b-boggarts-and-fears-from-potter-series.html

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  7. Wow, if only all love triangles could work out that way! What a great story.

    Anne from annehiga.com

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  8. Oh, for balance in life! I keep striving.

    https://bethlapinsatozblog.wordpress.com/

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  9. What a fabulous story. Every year I find new tales from your challenge series that my heart claims, and this undoubtedly will be one of them. Astrologically I have a Scorpio moon and Scorpio ascendant, and I must say I most definitely feel the pull to the nocturnal. But I think temperance/balance is something we all can benefit from.

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  10. I'm a water sign and to read that water (despite being associated with emotions) also represents balance pleases me:)
    Fabulous story but the civilised ending seems like a different author finished it because the beginning is so typical of fairy tales with curses etc.

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  11. I laughed at your comment on them going on a picnic like "civilized adults!" That is an funny detail of the story, isn't it? Well, he couldn't really have expected her to wait for years and years, could he? She wasn't Penelope!

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  12. Ah, balance! I really like your theme, Tarot Tales, it is going to be a lot of fun to follow.

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  13. This is such a lovely tale! I like your theme of balance.

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  14. A picnic party to choose the good one, fun experience! I would choose the day I guess.

    Quilting Patchwork & Appliqué

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  15. I don't think I've ever heard of this story.
    That endng is kind of weird, isn't it?

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter - The Great War

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  16. I like the way this story ends. No violence at all.

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  17. I guess a picnic is as good a way as any to resolve conflict. Weekends In Maine

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  18. Water for emotion.
    I hope to learn more about what elements like Earth, Water, Air, Fire, etc are in tarot.

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  19. Great sun story!

    Ronel visiting for the A-Z Challenge with an A-Z of Faerie: Black Sun

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