The Chariot
The Chariot is card 7 of the Major Arcana, the card of willpower in motion. Readers traditionally take it as determination, focus and success won by keeping opposing forces under control.
- Major Arcana
- Card 7
- Golden Dawn
- Cancer
- Upright
- willpower, drive, victory through control
- Reversed
- lack of direction, force without aim
Upright
Two sphinxes pull the chariot, one black and one white, and there are no reins. That detail shapes the reading: the driver steers by will. Readers take the card as a push forward, a goal pursued with discipline, and the self-control it takes to keep competing pulls moving in one direction.
Reversed
Drive without a clear aim is the usual reading upside down. The energy is there, but it runs in circles, or it turns into force used where patience would work better. Some readers take it as a sign that a plan has lost its direction.
In love and at work
Couples who draw it are often told the relationship needs both people pulling the same way, or one person steering too hard. For work, it is linked with ambition, competition and a period of focused effort toward a clear target.
In the picture
An armored figure with a star-topped crown stands in a canopied chariot decorated with stars, in front of a walled city. The black and white sphinxes lie at rest before it, and a winged emblem is painted on the front. The Golden Dawn gave the card to Cancer.
In a Caelumia profile
When The Chariot comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Determination, Ambition, Discipline.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.
Updated September 28, 2026.
See it in your own profile
Caelumia reads your whole birth chart and your numbers together, and shows where they agree. Your profile is free to start, and your first results appear while you answer.