The Lovers and Temperance

The oldest reading of this pair is alchemical: two things brought together and mixed until they are one thing. The Lovers supply the union, Temperance supplies the patient work of blending, and the tradition is clear that the second takes far longer than the first.

Associated with two lives being combined in practice rather than in principle. The pair reads it as slow and favourable.

Read for a merger, a joint project or two ways of working being reconciled. The pair expects it to take longer than planned.

Mixing is not the same as meeting. Allow for how long the second one takes, because underestimating it is what strains this.