Prudence
If you've been on Facebook lately, there's a good chance you've heard about the death of Wu Yongning. The story of his death, as well as the video of it, have gone somewhat viral on social media over the past few days. Stories about people willingly doing dangerous things and then dying are unfortunately common, which is why I felt the need to write this post. Depending on your esoteric background, you may or may not be familiar with the concept of the four cardinal virtues - temperance, strength, justice, and prudence (carefulness). In his book Spiritual Alchemy , Robert Ambelain assigns these four virtues to the elements as follows. Fire - Strength Air - Justice Water - Temperance Earth - Prudence You might notice that three of these four virtues (strength, justice, and temperance) are also the names of cards in the Major Arcana. The fourth virtue, prudence, is also reflected in one of the cards in the Major Arcana. Eliphas Levi gives the following description