Why we need a totally new take on the chariot card
The Chariot tarot card has traditionally been associated with control, willpower and the determination to succeed. But it you’ve ever been a human living on planet Earth, you might have noticed that when you make plans, God(dess) laughs. As 2023 unfolds and we collectively live some Chariot themes, let’s explore how we can use this card in an entirely new way - one that might actually work out for us a little better.
How I feel about The Chariot (Photo by Robert Andall on Unsplash)
The Chariot: control, determination and victory?
I’ve always felt a little confused by The Chariot. If I’m supposed to harness my willpower to be victorious in all of the things then I officially suck at this card. The last time I was able to consistently crush my goals was in my teens and since then life has, more often than not, been a series of humbling episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and I wouldn’t change a thing. But the idea that I’m in control and that it’s my own determination that got me here just doesn’t ring true.
If you lay out the 21 major arcana cards according to the way Rachel Pollock taught (3 rows of 7) then The Chariot comes at the end of the first line and marks the peak of the human ego. Up until this point life has been about building, trying, pushing and willing things to happen. Think about how you were in your youth; arrogant, immortal and convinced that you knew all the answers. You set goals and then strived to reach them. It never occurred to you that patience, humility and kindness might be the most important factors in a successful human existence.
Then shit starts to go wrong. For some of us it’s when we hit our first Saturn Return at 30 or the midlife crisis at 40. Others who are lucky (unlucky?) get the wakeup call even earlier. Whenever it happens, you suddenly look at your life and wonder if getting what you want is really the answer. You start to question the capitalistic, patriarchal dogma that drove you to be so self-centered, ambitious and grabbing and you decide that maybe it’s time to grow the fuck up.
This is not the the bullshit kind of “growing up” that includes buying a house, getting married and settling into a well-paid career. I’m talking about the kind of growing up where you take responsibility for your own decisions, become willing to feel your feels and question your own opinions, treat people the way you would want to be treated and stop pretending that your parents / ex boyfriend / whoever is the reason you’re not living your best life.
This is the retreat from the ego that the rest of the major arcana demands of you, if you’re willing to heed the call. From Justice all the way to Judgement the journey is less about making shit happen and more about surrendering, allowing, observing and letting ev-er-y-thing go. If you forgot to take responsibility for something in Justice or you didn’t want to own your behavioral patterns in the Wheel of Fortune, if you failed to let go of something in Death or you didn’t want to face up to your demons in the Devil then the Tower is going to make it all come crashing down anyway. The phrase that comes to mind is: let go or be dragged. One way or another, life is going to bring you to your knees.
The Chariot: letting go of your current egoic structures
As the gateway between the building up of the egoic structures and their inevitable demise, how can we understand The Chariot? Sure, it could be viewed as the ultimate peak of the ego - it’s last hurrah if you will. With this understanding we would see The Chariot as the final moment when we use our willpower to force things to go our way and maybe, for a time at least, we succeed. As I sit with this interpretation however, it doesn’t match my experience, which is that most of us don’t arrive at the Justice card on a winning streak. The Chariot that brought me to suicidal thoughts and an addiction recovery program at the age of 29 was not a Chariot of Fire, it was a shopping cart that was ON fire. It was a burning wreck on the freeway in which I, and several innocent bystanders, very nearly perished. It was a fucking gong show.
The way Lindsay Mack of Tarot for the Wild Soul talks about The Chariot is closer to this understanding. Discussing the card as one that prompts us to shed a skin, they point out that although the Charioteer might look like he has his shit together, the vehicle we see in the Smith Rider-Waite deck has concrete wheels and is pulled by stone sphinxes instead of horses. In other words, it’s not going to get him very far. Any “victory” he might gain will come from recognizing his need for a new ride and being willing to walk away from the old one.
One reason I feel called to find a new interpretation of The Chariot is that there are just too many cards in the deck that cultivate letting go and moving on. From Hanged Man and Death to The Tower and The World, I feel like we have that whole it’s-time-to-release thing covered. The other reason speaks to my own experience of spiritual growth and the profoundly new kind of world we are about to step into. This old-school toxic masculine way of being in which to “succeed” meant to conquer and control oneself, ones peers and the natural world is done. It’s time to talk about courage, willpower and victory in a new way. So, very tentatively and in the spirit of spit-balling, let me throw out some ideas.
courage & WIllingness (to do the right thing)
“No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place you may require all you’ve got.”
The Chariot is traditionally associated with courage, determination and success. Whether it’s harnessing material resources to crush your external goals or harnessing your internal strength to stare your own demons in the face to crush your spiritual goals, these things have one thing in common: you’re going to need a shit ton of courage. And while going out there and getting stuff done can be a sign of bravery, let me ask you this. When you have a deadline at work and you’re sick, does it take more courage to push through your sickness or to ask for what you need and take the day off? Does it take more courage to build a business than feeling your grief after a miscarriage? And is public speaking braver than admitting to someone that you lied, even in private? It ALL takes courage: the going-out-there-and-building-shit stuff AND the becoming-a-more-authentic-vulnerable-humble-human shit. And, if I might go out on a limb here, I would argue that it might take even MORE courage to do the latter. After all, the world understands what you’re doing when you create things in the material world, but you’ll get fewer accolades for doing less, feeling your feelings more, questioning your own opinions and prioritizing presence and peace above striving and achievement. Going out there and GETTING SHIT DONE is surely a sign of Chariot energy but, as the above quote from Alcoholics Anonymous suggests, revealing our soft underbelly can also take allllll the willpower we can muster.
Control: A route to success or a waste of energy?
As a birth doula, whenever I have a client who tells me that they are definitely NOT going to have a c-section, I wince. If there’s one thing that being at a lot of births has taught me, it’s that your job (in life, as well as in birth) is to gather your tribe and tools, to practice, practice, practice and then to COMPLETELY LET GO of the outcome. The most important part being the letting go. Yet we continue to be convinced that we need to control things and spend much of our lives thinking up strategies to do just that, even in the face of constant failure. Surely, the Chariot isn’t condoning this kind of hubris. If it is, then tarot becomes your drunk friend trying to give you bad advice in the bathroom; fun to listen to but a terrible idea to take seriously.
Instead, perhaps this card is actually pointing to our lack of control, exhibited in the concrete wheels and dodgy choice of horsepower. Maybe the Charioteer isn’t getting very far because he is wasting energy on trying to control the outcome, rather than focusing on doing his best with what is in front of him. Maybe he’s a cautionary tale.
Navigating opposing energies & extremes
“In front of the vehicle sit a black and a white sphinx, representing duality, positive and negative and, at times, opposing forces. Note how the sphinxes are pulling in opposite directions, but the charioteer uses his willpower and sheer resolve to steer the chariot forward in the direction he wants.”
Most interpretations of the Chariot include a discussion of the opposing forces that the Charioteer is supposed to be harnessing. Some have argued that they represent the conscious and the unconscious, which must work together in order for our man to attain victory. Others claim that the opposite forces are the dark side of human nature versus the belief that there is some good in the world. The above quote from Biddy Tarot suggests that the charioteer skillfully manages these forces to go in the direction of his choosing. These interpretations are valid, but I think I want to take us in a slightly different direction.
What if the two sphinxes represent the opposite extremes that most of us swing wildly between due to our own willfulness. When we live extremes, we waste energy and get stuck. As Michael Singer points out in The Untethered Soul, “The more extreme you are, the less forward movement there is.” For example, if you eat both too much or too little, you waste energy thinking about when and how much you’re consuming, worrying about the health consequences for your body and probably in looking at yourself in the mirror.
The New Chariot: seeking inner balance
If you can simply eat when you’re hungry, you follow the natural flow of your own body and avoid all that wasted time and energy thinking and worrying about it. Similarly, avoiding doing any work might leave you financially struggling and lacking in purpose and overworking will leave you exhausted or explaining to your loved ones why you missed their birthdays. When you understand this truth, the middle way isn’t a moral position, it’s just a logical one. Swinging wildly between extremes wastes your time and energy and finding middle ground is going to make your life a lot easier. Rather than using grim determination to force the outside world to match our insides, this new take on The Chariot is about summoning the courage to allow our insides to be transformed. We harness our willpower to seek inner balance and use our determination to make the decision to stay true to this awakening process Every Single Damn Day. We stop trying to fix the world and become willing to hand the reigns over to a power greater than our selves.
The Chariot: master of your fate and/or the courage to let go of it all?
By redefining the Chariot, we invite a deeper understanding of the transformative power this card can have. It’s not just about setting goals and doggedly chasing them no matter what. In this new perspective, The Chariot becomes a symbol of both the transformative journey that we can choose to take and the ways we can user our willpower to drive ourselves into a mud-laden ditch. As always, the choice is yours.
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