mor on temperament

7/29/2019 Mor on Temperament

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So synastry is a waste of time, uncle ?

In the way it is done, for the reasons for which it is done, most certainly. To use synastry to answer

the question of whether two people will fall for each other or not is to misuse it. But there are also many

technical reasons for it not working. One of these is the failure to consider temperament. There are any

number of things that will strike a spark of attraction between two people - your own dear aunt even found

one or two of them in me, once upon a time. But if we want to know how likely those two people are to hold

together once those attractive sparks have faded, we must begin our enquiry with their temperaments.

Birds of a feather, then, uncle ?

So you might think. But answer me this: suppose a very hot dry person, a choleric type, gets

involved with another choleric type. What will they do ?

Fight !

Of course ! Thats what choleric types do best. This can be useful so long as you can get them

organised to go and fight somebody else, but as soon as theyve won the war, what will they do next ? What

do soldier-boys do when theyre left alone in barracks ?

Fight ! I repeated.

They brawl, yes. Or to try to balance out all that heat, they go to a pub and ingest a great deal of

cold moist stuff. Which, of course, only fuels the heat. It may not be obvious, but there is nonetheless a close

relationship between liquids like the ocean, or wine, and fire. Those liquids may look cold and moist, but

they have fire within. I was beginning to think about moving the brandy bottle out of his reach. These

liquids, the watery stuff: for us they are phlegm, the cold/moist, which is why our hot/dry soldier boy will

reach for this to try to achieve an inner balance. But phlegm is derived from the Greek word for flame. So

although it is water - or wine: much the same thing really - for us it derives from fire. Fire creates phlegm.

I must have looked at least as baffled as I felt. He had totally lost me.

Think about it, he explained. What happens if you eat too much chilli ? You suddenly produce a

great deal of phlegm, to balance it out. What happens if you burn your finger? You get a little white bump

full of phlegm. Or think back to the creation of the four elements, how it is the heat of the Divine shining

upon the cold/dry of earth that calls forth moisture.

_OK, uncle: so they consume this cold/moist stuff, but because of the fire it only makes them fight

more.

Thats right. So if a choleric type hooks up with another choleric type, there will be trouble. Fine so

long as they can make common cause against someone else, but take that away and they will fight each

other.


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What happens when a sanguine type gets together with another sanguine?

Too much talking ?

Yes! Whos going to phone for a take-away? I dont know. Lets talk about it for another six hours

first. By which time theyll have both starved.

Or if you put two cold/dry, melancholic types together, what happens ?

I had no answer.

Exactly. Not much! They bore each other to death. Hes been sitting at one end of the table for four

years; shes been sitting at the other end for four years, and they havent exchanged a word. Occasionally a

breeze enters the house and blows some of the dust off them both.

And if you have two phlegmatic types together?

Theres not enough wine in all the world! A wild flood of desire, sinking into lethargy. So with all

four types, matching with their own doesnt hold much promise.

You talk about balance, uncle. They can match with their opposite type: that will create a perfect

balance.

So it might seem. And thats a good suggestion, my boy: youre clearly getting the point here. But its

not how it works in practice. A melancholic type could hook up with a sanguine type. The melancholics cold

and dry would be balanced out by the sanguines hot and moist to produce a beautiful

union, covering all four points: hot, cold, moist, and dry. But imagine: theres our melancholic farmer, out in

his field, knee-deep in manure, staring into the sunset with a blissful contemplative grin on his face, happy

as Larry. Suddenly along comes a perfumed little scribe from the town hall, with his Blackberry in one hand

and the book of rules in the other, wanting to add up every grain of wheat in the field, divide by the number

of pigs, then take away the number he first thought of. What will happen? They look at each other with

incomprehension. The farmer thinks, Why does this madman want to add up my grains of wheat anddivide by the number of pigs? The scribe thinks, Why is that madman standing in a big pile of manure ?

Total incomprehension.

OK, so being the same doesnt work; being different doesnt work: how about half and half?

Yes. I am of course talking basic principles here: no one is entirely choleric or entirely melancholic. We all

contain something of all four types, else we should not be human. But the more strongly we conform to the

nature of one type, the more we will find these problems. For a lasting bond, it makes better sense, in

principle, for a cold/dry person to unite with someone whos either cold/moist or hot/dry. This gives them

one element in common - enough to give them some understanding - and one element different, so they


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dont replicate each other. Do remember, my boy, replicating each other is not what a relationship is about,

tempting though it may seem at times.

I looked at him, then at my aunt. No, replicating each other was definitely not what their

relationship was about.

Let me tell you a story, he continued. This illustrates the power of the drive we have within us to

achieve balance. You have perhaps heard of William Reich. He was a big name when I was young. He was

born on a farm in Austria. I know nothing about his fathers birthchart, but from the accounts of Reichs

youth, his father was obviously extremely choleric.

I interrupted: Shouldnt he have been melancholic, being a farmer?

Perhaps he should, but he was not. Of course, people dont always follow the career paths that fit

with their types. The world might be a happier place if they did. He ruled his farm with a rod of iron; the

people who worked there lived in terror of him.

One day, when Reich was quite young, he found his mother in bed with one of the farm-hands. He

thought about this for a couple of weeks, then decided to tell Dad. This was not a wise decision. Dad picked

up a gun and went after the farm-hand, while his mother swallowed poison and died. The father

was devastated. It was as if he was suddenly confronted by the consequences of his own nature: Look what

this choleric nature of mine has done! This woman I love, my wife, has destroyed herself because of this! So

he decided to kill himself.

Now, hes got the gun. That would seem to offer a straightforward method of killing himself. But

that would have been killing himself in a choleric kind of way. That was no good: that wouldnt satisfy the

drive for balance at all. So what did he do, in remorse for the consequences of his hot/dry nature? It was the

middle of winter. He went and stood up to his waist in a freezing pond. He stayed there for hours, hoping to

catch tuberculosis.

Eventually, he did fall ill, but at first not fatally. It took him three years to die of the cold/moist

disease which he had deliberately contracted in this desperate attempt to balance out his hot/dry nature.

This is a remarkable illustration of how deep-seated this drive is within us.

Do you think being a farmer exacerbated the problems he had with choler?

Likely so. Finding a suitable outlet for the temperament is a regular issue in consultations. Its a

particular problem for choleric types, because they find it most difficult to integrate into modern society. The

choleric is the warrior, but it is no longer socially acceptable to go pillage the next village every time you

want to work off a bit of choler. In principle, pillaging is to be encouraged: it keeps the choleric types happy


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and prevents them making a daily nuisance of themselves. Its just, of course, that wed all rather it was

someone else who got pillaged.

Mr Virgil has some wise words on raising and dealing with the different temperaments. Have you

read his Georgics ?

Its all about farming techniques isnt it? No, thank you!

Oh, what you are missing? Why ever should one of the most sophisticated of poets, writing for a

wealthy urban elite, write a textbook on farming ? How many Georgics are there?

Four, I think.

Isnt that a clue for you? What is at the heart of these wonderful poems but a meditation on

temperament. There is much to be learned there.

A brief review of the four types

I think youre getting the idea here, my boy. But lets recap, briefly. The central point is that the

cholerics want to act; the sanguines to think; the melancholics to have and hold; the phlegmatics to feel.

What William Lilly says about the sanguine temperament is that they are cheerful, liberal and open-

hearted._ If you believe that, youll believe anything. The sanguine types do get an unnaturally good press.

Why ?

Because they write most of it?

Of course! Its the scribes who write the books. If the phlegmatics ever took over their job, wed be

reading about what sterling fellows they are. At its best, yes, the sanguine type does take on the fine,

Jupitarian quality of humanity that we read about in Lilly. Being a decent person, behaving as a human

being should behave. But because the sanguine type is concentrated in the mind, it can be utterly divorced

from all human feeling. Im sure if you were recruiting for staff for the vivisection laboratory, youd

be getting far more than your fair share of sanguines among the applicants. And there can be little more

inhuman in its operation than certain levels of bureaucracy.

The important thing with the sanguine type is not whether youre good natured or not; its whether

you approaching the world through the mind - regardless of whether that mind is in working order.

Lilly describes the cholerics as angry, quarrelsome, ambitious, seditious and changing their

opinions. Generally troublemakers. Why are they changing their opinions?

I dont know uncle. Because they are eager to act ?


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Yes: it is the product of their drive for action. If you are choleric, you cant stand being stationary:

youve got to do something all the time. The warriors may conquer the country, but they dont make good

administrators once its conquered. All they want to do is go off and conquer somebody else - cause some

more trouble.

Melancholics, Lilly says, are slow in resolution. Remember that most famous of melancholics,

Hamlet. Very slow in resolution. Theyre fraudulent, Lilly says. Why?

Something to do with having and holding?

Yes, because they value money so much. If you value money more than you value someone elses

human feeling, you may well defraud them. Not, of course, that every melancholic is a fraud, any more than

every choleric is a hooligan. Theyre secretive and fearful, according to Lilly. Why?

Oh, I know! If youre desperate to have and hold, youre always worried that someone might take

what youve got.

Right! Then the phlegmatic types, he says, are cowards and uxorious. Theyre dull fellows and

sluggards in performing any business. Their principle I want to feel. But this is not necessarily I want to

feel good. If there isnt a good feeling going, fine, well settle for a bad feeling - so long as we get to feel

something. So the phlegmatic can be a drama queen, because they want feeling about all else. Theyre lost if

there isnt either physical or emotional sensation going on.

I nodded, in sign of understanding.

mor on temperament

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