Major Arcana · 7
The Chariot
Le Chariot (Tarot de Marseille) · Il Carro (Italian tarocchi) · Child of the Powers of the Waters; Lord of the Triumph of Light (Golden Dawn)
A crowned, armoured figure riding a canopied chariot drawn by two sphinxes, one black and one white. In the Waite–Smith tradition it stands for determination, mastery and hard-won victory.
Upright victory · willpower · determination · control · direction · self-discipline · progress
Reversed loss of direction · aggression · scattered effort · obstacles · lack of control · stalled progress
- Astrology
- Cancer
- Element
- Water
- Hebrew letter
- Cheth
- Number
- 7
- Golden Dawn title
- Child of the Powers of the Waters; Lord of the Triumph of Light
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
The Chariot is a card of momentum. In the Waite–Smith tradition it signifies victory achieved through willpower and self-command, the ability to hold opposing forces together and steer them in one direction. The driver has no reins: control comes from within.
Love and relationships: resolve and commitment, pushing through difficulties, or taking the lead in shaping the relationship. It can also mean a move or a journey undertaken together.
Work and money: ambition, competition and success won by persistence. Readers associate it with promotions, contests, travel for work and projects that move forward quickly once a clear course is set.
Advice: pick a direction and hold it. Gather conflicting impulses — fear and desire, caution and ambition — and make them pull the same way. The card's victory is not luck but disciplined focus maintained over time.
Reversed
In the reversed position the Chariot loses its steering. Readers see effort pulled in two directions, plans stalled by external obstacles or internal doubt, or determination hardening into aggression and the need to win at any cost. Another reading is loss of self-control: the sphinxes have wandered off.
In relationships it may show a power struggle or one partner driving everything. At work it can warn of a project going nowhere, or of ambition outrunning preparation.
Many readers set reversals aside and instead read an upright Chariot's surroundings for signs of difficulty.
The image
In Smith's design a young, crowned charioteer stands in a square stone chariot beneath a blue canopy spangled with stars. He wears armour, with crescent moons bearing faces on his shoulders and a square on his breastplate, and holds a wand or sceptre in his right hand. Two sphinxes, one black and one white, rest before the chariot rather than pulling it, and there are no reins. On the chariot front is a winged disc, and beneath it a small red emblem commonly identified as a lingam and yoni. Behind lies a river and a walled city with towers.
History
Italian triumphal processions, with their cars bearing allegorical figures, are the likely source of the early tarot Chariot; the Visconti-Sforza card shows a crowned woman in a chariot drawn by winged horses. The Tarot de Marseille's Le Chariot has a crowned prince in a canopied car, with two horses facing in different directions. Éliphas Lévi redrew the card with sphinxes, a cube-shaped car and the winged disc, and Smith followed his design closely.
The Golden Dawn assigned the card to Cancer and the letter Cheth. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) speaks of the charioteer as a conqueror on all planes, but cautions that his victory is of the mind and the outer world rather than the final spiritual attainment.
Symbolism
The paired sphinxes, black and white, represent opposing forces — light and dark, positive and negative — brought under one will; the absence of reins means mastery is mental. The cube of the chariot suggests the material world, the starry canopy the heavens under which the victor travels. The crescent moons echo Cancer, a sign ruled by the Moon, and Waite named them Urim and Thummim, the oracular objects of the Hebrew high priest.
Seven has long been counted a sacred and complete number — seven planets, seven days. Cheth means "fence" or "enclosure", fitting the armoured, protected figure, and Cancer adds the image of the crab's shell. On the Tree of Life the Golden Dawn set the card between Binah and Geburah.
In a reading
Readers tend to read the Chariot as forward motion. With the Strength card it contrasts outer control with inner gentleness; with the Six of Wands it confirms public success; with the Two of Swords it may sharpen a stalemate into a decision. As an outcome it is generally favourable, provided the querent remains in charge of the reins they do not visibly hold.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- Dogme et rituel de la haute magie — Éliphas Lévi, 1856
- The Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 1 — Stuart R. Kaplan, 1978
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — Rachel Pollack, 1980