The Changing of the Chariots

Photo by Robyn Beattie

This week preparing to teach Wheel of Archetypal Selves: The Many Faces of Change, (for which we start off with the Chariot card) I came across an entry about the Chariot I’d written four years ago before Mary Allen and I started posting our monthly Tarot writings at Tarot for Two. I was so pleased to see that the Chariot card, back then, helped me consider the transition from “at-home mom” to “at home on-line teaching mom.” 

With gratitude, I find that four years later, my Chariot has changed; I’m no longer teaching my beloved Transformative Blogging classes but was transformed by teaching them and brought to a time and place in which I can fully devote my attention to my Wheel of Archetypal Tarot Writing classes I so love to teach. I offer this bit of Chariot process writing in hopes that it inspire you to consider your own Chariot and threshold you long to cross.

If you love writing, and the Tarot, consider joining us (last weekend to sign up—we start Monday April 11 and have a great class forming as we speak): Wheel of Archetypal Selves: The Many Faces of Change.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

The Chariot: “Out of Relationship and into Work” (from 2012)

Paul Fenton Smith writes regarding the Chariot: “You are learning that courage is a combination of commitment and doubt;” the MotherPeace guide book addresses the charioteer as: “one who can move out of relationship and into work.”

In the Rider-Waite-Smith image, I’m attracted to the feminine male with his orange gold lined long locks of hairs cascading over his shoulders, each shoulder bearing the blue upturned faces of two crescent moons—one smiling, one frowning. I’m attracted to his broad chest with its mesh undergarment covered in some kind of ribbed shield with its glowing square of light over the heart, center, which an earlier source told me connects him to the Empress, though its white brings to mind for me more the energy of the High Priestess. I’m attracted to his stance, his confident posture, a belt askew nonchalantly across his hips bearing the symbols of astrology, Pisces, the Moon, Uranus. I like his silvery blue sleeve cuffs for their dramatic flair, webbed, reminding me of the sea and his star shroud above him and the green wreathe of leaves, so natural, he wears on top of his star tipped crown. I feel he is capable, confident, prepared, temporarily resting before the chariot itself moves out into the streets.

Now compare this charioteer to the Thoth version. I love this charioteer too, but for opposite reasons. Not a single inch of this charioteer’s skin is bared—he is entirely sheathed in gold armor, not even his eyes or lips visible beneath his helmet. So with no human face to connect with, I am pulled in by the blue orbit of rings behind his chariot, the inescapable nested ring of red that doubles as a cape and his chamber, the pair of red wheels and that centrifugal red in his lap, his legs crossed. He is definitely a step less prepared for motion than his Rider-Waite-Smith twin, for his legs are folded in front of him in the seat of contemplation. Why the blue and red spinning disk in his lap? Like the alchemical cup, peered into, is this the chalice in his lap? Maybe he realizes the gift of incarnation, the birth room behind him, the lives he might touch represented in the blue and red in his own cup. I believe he will proceed with care, but he’ll need to take off his mask before he can see.

When the card fell for me, I felt assured that I was being given support to move forward in my transition from the home and hearth to the homes and hearths of others via the quiet venue of teaching women writers on-line. Multiple avenues and chariots and charioteers exist; time to stop stopping myself. My husband’s ideas of how I should earn, coupled with my own, may have hemmed me in to this bronze/gold suit of armor, to wait it out.

I’m living Fenton’s quote, “Courage is a combination of commitment and doubt,” for as I step out to teach, I find I am making the map as I go, that making a mask I asked my Transformative Blogging students to make cracks open hidden territory in my body, making room for more of my soul.

I doubt, I assign, I do the work beside my students and when the month is done, on my piano sits a silver and blue face with its silver star at the third eye, welcoming me to keep writing and teaching in the circumference of the orbit of home, for there are still children to raise, still a husband to project onto and tease apart what is mine and what is not.

If I can remember the two charioteers as I go, I can either don my webbed shirt of mail and let the sun fall on my face as I enter my day or I can in fact take days in-between to retreat into my golden armour and contemplate how I want to spend my blood, my hours, my time, my love, and ponder what exactly I convey to my children rushing to and from. As always there remains the need to balance their needs with mine, to stop to have tea with my daughter when I can, moving “out of relationship and into work”, but kindly, without abandoning.

Related link:

Mary Allen writes about her experience of the Chariot card at Tarot for Two:

The Chariot and the Knight of Swords

New Tarot Tuesday prompts for you:

The Fairy Godfather or the Nine of Cups

Rainbow Blessings or the Ten of Cups

Podcast: Ren Powell asked me some lovely questions regarding poetry here; discussion includes my growing relationship to writing and Tarot as well:

This Choice, Tania Pryputniewicz

Other podcasts in this series:

This Choice, Molly Gaudry on poetry, "power nouns," "lists," "sonic play," roller derby

Photos by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie with exception of photo of the cards. Tarot cards pictured are from Thoth, Shadow of Oz, Daughters of Moon, Rider Waite Smith, and Basque Decks.