The Chariot Tarot Card Definitions & Meanings
Travel, change and movement typify this card. The Chariot is about control - the driver is in charge of the horses pulling the chariot. The Chariot is about getting us to where we want to go, and in this context, it follows naturally from the choices made in the Lovers card. In order to travel at speed, we are generally sitting down or immobile in a protective chamber which moves faster than we can walk or run. This chamber protects us from the elements. A static chamber can be a room or house, where we feel safe and protected. When the Chariot goes wrong, there is an inability to take control of life - it leads us rather than the other way round. Travel plans go wrong. We can not go where we want to.
Rider-Waite - The Chariot
An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding, broadly speaking, to the traditional description which I have given in the first part. On the shoulders of the victorious hero are supposed to be the Urim and Thummim. He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all planes - in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. He has thus replied to the sphinx, and it is on this account that I have accepted the variation of Éliphas Lévi; two sphinxes thus draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.
It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and (e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer. He is not hereditary royalty and he is not priesthood.
Chariot divinatory meanings
Succour, providence; also war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.
Reversed Card meanings
Riot, quarrel, dispute, litigation, defeat.
Book of Thoth - The Chariot
The Issue of the Vulture, Two-in-One, conveyed;
this is the Chariot of Power.
TRINC: the last oracle.
Triumph, victory, hope, memory, digestion, violence in maintaining traditional ideas, the "die-hard", ruthlessness, lust of destruction, obedience, faithfulness, authority under authority.
Golden Dawn: The Chariot
Child of the Power of the Waters, Lord of the Triumph of Light
Triumph, victory, health. Success though sometimes not stable and enduring.
Mathers - The Chariot
Triumph, Victory, Overcoming Obstacles.
Reversed Card meanings
Overthrown, Conquered by Obstacles at the last moment.
Etteilla - Dissension
War, Dispute, Disruption, Troubles, Riots, Unrest, Battle, Fight, Combat. Arrogance, Haughtiness, Vanity, False Glory, Pomp, Ostentation, Daring, Temerity. Violence, Disorder, Anger, Injury, Abuse, Presumptuousness, Vengeance.
Reversed Card meanings
Unrest, Racket, Quarrel, Disagreement, Contesting, Lawsuit, Harassment, Debates.
Thierens: VII. The Chariot. Libra
In the Seventh house of the evolutionary cycle the relation of the Self with the Not-self or outer world is contracted and completed and the 'organism' arises as the systematic whole of organs, a lawful microcosm, which in every instance is a phenomenon of the Cosmic Law, first significance of Libra. This idea is very well illustrated by the picture of the Chariot, drawn by the White and the Black Sphinx and governed by the Magician incarnate. It is the Self embodied. This card consequently means marriage, contract, body and bodily existence, organisation, achievement, co-operation.
P. says this card has to do with the Hebrew letter Zain, which "represents an arrow." Now it is very curious to see, that in Hindu astrology the sign Libra is symbolised by an arrow touching an eye, evidently meaning the principles of the organism or systematic complex of organs, and at the same time the understanding, or knowing, which is the result of the eye seeing the light.
The Magician has become the 'Conqueror'; the forces of good and of evil both drawing his chariot symbolise the fact that good and evil, agreeable as well as painful experiences, make us wiser and contain the elements of Existence, spirit and matter both.
As a matter of fact the card may have to do with our adversaries.
On the front "we see the Indian lingam," says P. we should like to add: in connection with the Indian (!) yoni, i.e. the union of the sexes, or the two in one (bond). Here the 'Fall' into matter has been completed. The sphinxes are female entities, the driver of the Chariot is a man. This not only symbolises the subjugation of Nature by will-power, but also the fact that, while inwardly 'woman rules the world' (the Empress), rulership in the outer world lies with man, and it is his duty to keep within due bonds the 'attractive' forces of woman, who, however, appears to be the personification of motoric force to him and his 'chariot.' That woman practically gives the inspirational lead and motive to man in this world is being openly recognised by psychologists in our time.
Ouspensky: Card V The Chariot
“Man.” The Imagination. Magic. Self-suggestion. Self deceit. Artificial means of attainment. Pseudo-occultism. Pseudo-theosophy.
I saw a chariot drawn by two sphinxes, one white, the other black. Four pillars supported a blue canopy, on which were scattered five-pointed stars. The Conqueror, clad in steel armour, stood under this canopy guiding the sphinxes. He held a sceptre, on the end of which were a globe, a triangle and a square. A golden pentagram sparkled in his crown. On the front of the chariot there was represented a winged sphere and beneath that the symbol of the mystical lingam, signifying the union of two principles.
"Everything in this picture has a significance. Look and try to understand", said the voice.
"This is Will armed with Knowledge. We see here, however, the wish to achieve, rather than achievement itself. The man in the chariot thought himself a conqueror before he had really conquered, and he believes that victory must come to the conqueror. There are true possibilities in this beautiful conception, but also many false ones. Illusory fires and numerous dangers are hidden here.
He controls the sphinxes by the power of a magic word, but the tension of his Will may fail and then the magic word will lose its power and he may be devoured by the sphinxes.
This is indeed the Conqueror, but only for the moment; he has not yet conquered Time, and the succeeding moment is unknown to him.
This is the Conqueror, not by love, but by fire and the sword, - a conqueror against whom the conquered may arise. Do you see behind him the towers of the conquered city? Perhaps the flame of uprising burns already there.
And he is unaware that the city vanquished by means of fire and the sword is the city within his own consciousness, that the magic chariot is in himself and that the blood-thirsty sphynxes, also a state of consciousness within, watch his every movement. He has externalized all these phases of his mind and sees them only outside himself. This is his fundamental error. He entered the outer court of the Temple of knowledge, but thinks he has been in the Temple itself. He regarded the rituals of the first tests as initiation, and he mistook for the goddess, the priestess who guarded the threshold. Because of this misconception great perils await him.
Nevertheless it may be that even in his errors and perils the Great Conception lies concealed. He seeks to know and, perhaps, in order to attain, mistakes, dangers and even failures are necessary.
Understand that this is the same man whom you saw uniting Heaven and Earth, and again walking across a hot desert to a precipice.
