The Chariot.
Two opposites harnessed, and nothing moving.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
A crowned figure stands in a stone car under a canopy printed with stars. A black sphinx and a white one lie at the front of it. There are no reins; he holds a wand. A walled town sits behind him.
Nothing here is in motion. Drive, held together by will, with no strap or rein between the man and what pulls him, and two opposite animals lying down in front. You are keeping two contradictions pointed the same way by attention alone, and it has not moved yet.
Four things people go to on this card
- the sphinxes
You went to the animals in front. One black, one white, both lying down rather than pulling.
Opposed forces held in one direction, at rest. Nothing is being dragged anywhere in this picture. The control is the achievement and the travel has not started, which is the part people skip when they read this card as momentum.
The vehicle is made of armour and the two things harnessed to it contradict each other. That is a genuine feat and it is also a stationary one. Name the two opposite things you are currently holding in one direction, and then say honestly whether anything has moved since you started holding them.
What two opposite things are you holding in one direction right now, and is it moving?
- his hands
The hands are what you noticed. No reins in them, and nothing physical between him and the animals.
Control that is not mechanical. He is holding a wand, and whatever is keeping those two facing the same way is not attached to either of them. There is no equipment in this card at all.
Either mastery or an illusion about to end, and the card will not say which. What it does say is plain enough: a thing steered by attention stops being steered the moment you look away. You have something in that condition, and you have been taking its quietness as proof that it is fine.
What are you holding together by attention alone, and what happens when you look away?
- the city wall
You looked behind him at the buildings. A walled town, and the chariot is outside it.
He has left somewhere. The place he came from is a whole town, complete, behind him, and functioning without him in it. Nobody in this card is looking back at it, including him.
The armour and the canopy make more sense once the wall is in view. This is somebody who took the protection of the town out onto the road, which is what most people do and what nobody admits to. Whatever you walked out of, you are still carrying its defences, and they were built for a place you no longer live.
What have you left that you are still carrying the defences of?
- the canopy
You went up to the covering. Blue cloth with stars printed on it, held over the car.
Somebody has brought their own stars with them. It is a piece of cloth, with stars on it, over a stone vehicle, on a road. Held up on four poles by a man who is going nowhere at present.
There is something impressive in that and something faintly absurd, and the card carries both without choosing. The conviction that gets a person moving is usually a portable version of something much larger. The one you carry is doing real work. It would not survive being held up next to the thing it is a copy of.
What belief are you carrying a portable version of, and would it survive the real thing?
On the Tree of Life, The Chariot is the eighteenth path, Cheth, from Binah to Geburah, in the Golden Dawn's attribution (Liber 777).
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.