The Chariot

A Tarot card.

Rider Waite deck
An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding, broadly speaking, to the traditional description. 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 Waite accepted the variation of Eliphas Levi; two sphinxes thus draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.

It is to be understood for this reason 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; that the planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; that the liberation which he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; that the tests of initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and 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.

Meanings
receptivity, will, speech

Develop an understanding of the systems of judgment in the community and establish the superself's role in it.

This card represents triumph - victory through self-mastery, and the bringing together of powerful and possibly conflicting forces to work in harmony toward a common goal. This is a reminder that when one lets go of doubt and fear, and focuses only on the wished for result, victory is assured.

Reversed Meaning
Defeat, obstacles overcome you.

Correspondences

 * Links Binah to Geburah as path number 18 of the Tree of Life
 * Yetziratic Intelligence - the intelligence of the House of Influence
 * The Black & White Sphinx appear similar to the pillars on The High Priestess
 * Organic Time - The Devonian Leap The development of lobe-finned fish on land. The lobe-finned fish are ancestors of every form of life outside of the oceans. Evolution pushes us to conquer new elements. In Time, You/We/The Universe must discover and conquer new elements.

Resources

 * Waite, A.E. (1911) The Pictoral Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination. London: Rider.