MISSIVE 33
Ramifications of the Chariot as a Car
The most important matter in understanding The Chariot (VII) as a reader is in differentiating it from its occasional neighbor, Strength (VIII). Comparatively speaking, both cards are about self-actualization: some vision of a unified self or consciousness overcoming the totality of its complex nature. Strength is binary (the woman gently bridling the lion), while the Chariot is trinary (two serene horses or sphinxes in thrall to a princely passenger):
This makes for a mess that I touched on in Missive 32: the lion depicted in Strength is not a creature with a single motivation. Satiating the animal as a whole requires attention to something as complex and multipartite as an aquarium. Both are about wrangling an alien and unconscious interior, and with symbolic imagery that doesn’t heavily vary, especially in the Waite-Smith seen above.
Given this, while VIII demonstrates achieving a holistic mastery, VII is explicitly about achieving alignment, with two oppositely-colored beasts of burden overtly echoing Plato’s allegory of the chariot. And the two sphinxes align well with basic, early twentieth century psychological models: the ego and id, the left and right brain, the conscious and unconscious, the masculine and feminine, etc. If either animal does not cooperate with the other, the Chariot cannot properly move forward.
A number of decks have upgraded the Chariot to becoming some form of automobile. Tarotwave portrays it as a sports car, the Rohrig as a race car, and the Light Visions as a classic car, with special attention to the crest:
These three visions of the automobile are all luxuries or specialties with their own nuances. If the Chariot is to be a car, it can’t just be any car- it should be worthy of a motorcade, a grand prix, a royal procession.
An automobile contains numerous bilateral systems that echo the Chariot’s. The pistons and spark plugs of the engine must move in a symmetric-yet-syncopated rhythm to avoid rattling towards catastrophic failure. Wheels and axles must work in tandem, and the steering column must move both front wheels in parallel. If at any point these systems fail to align properly, the car will be rendered inoperable.
Nevertheless, a car is a horseless carriage. The thought experiment underlying the Chariot is altered by the fact that these bilateral subsystems do not have a will of their own. Their alignment is not a feat of the rider, but rather, an unseen engineer.
This isn’t entirely untrue in the original arcanum, however; there is nothing to indicate that our charioteer has built the vehicle that he operates, or that he is responsible for directing the sphinxes himself at all. Furthermore, in many depictions of chariots across time, the actual horse handler is omitted from the imagery. The whole of the apparatus across time need not be visually represented to communicate the synthesis between its trichotomous parts.
We are mostly automatic ourselves, after all, not entirely manual. We don’t need to consciously thump our hearts or breathe to exert ourselves upon the world. We do, however, need alignment between our beliefs, our needs, our strategies, and all other independent aspects of ourselves, to perpetually become who we desire to be.
I would love to see the Chariot represented as a helicopter in a future deck. The operation of the main and rear rotors in orthogonal counterbalance introduces spatial axes of being, rather than simply describing aligned forces in terms of chirality. Such a vehicle requires management of opposed spatial forces to achieve seemingly impossible flight with a hummingbird’s grace. It would be a departure from the history of the card, but could also communicate its core meanings in new and exciting ways.