The Chariot speaks of energy, power, vitality, speed, force, direction, triumph, etc. William Blake says, ‘Give me my chariots of desire’; in tantra, they say, ‘Never abandon the energy of desire’. The energy of desire leads to transcendence, and the Chariot is a transcendental vehicle of power—a Ferrari as opposed to a Volkswagen. The Chariot flies, it dazzles—it is godly. Of course, the Charioteer is flanked by auspicious symbols: two crescent moons on his shoulders symbolising potential, a star symbolising direction, and a wand representing magic and power.
Valentine Tomberg says that The Chariot represents ‘The Master’ in its positive and negative implications. The positive implications are obvious—we cheer a great athlete or artist; we look up to strength and vitality; we admire acrobat and his seeming weightlessness, the runner and his speed; the musician and the spell he weaves on us. So what is the danger of mastery? It is a naive ignorance of the shadow side of life and the pride that comes with mastery. When one reaches a pinnacle, there is a danger of hubris. The risks of mastery could be crashing one's chariot into the sun. Later, there is the danger of Nostalgia for the peak experience.
The shadow of The Chariot is, in tantric language, the ‘drunken elephant’. This is intoxicated power without skill, protection, or direction. In the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition, they speak ‘Rudrahood’, which means ultimate ego-hood, a demonic intelligence. One has incredible physical or worldly power, but it is in service of self and ego. The dictator makes a great homoerotic display of his martial abilities and creates the black magic of war. Yet, his mania for perfection and control leads to chaos and destruction. His perfect uniform, with its medals, will turn into a bloody mess of bloody rags to decorate a corpse.
After 40, we give up our physical chariot to a certain extent, and the rest of our existence should be more weighted to spiritual matters, Carl Jung tells us. While the physical body becomes weak—if the spirit isn’t strong, we become empty shells. Therefore, in the twilight of our life, we must find the inner chariot, the spiritual vitality. If we are lucky, our spirit retains its elan, even as our body grows old and weak. For some, the spiritual adventure of the second part of life is even more significant than the outward adventures of Alexander the Great and Napoleon.
Of course, there is the danger of worldly megalomania and spiritual inflation. Because of a spiritual ‘experience’, we could develop a Jesus complex or see ourselves as a spiritual Avatar. A taste of the Kundalini energy—the divine inner chariot—if taken hold of by the ego almost always leads to madness, inflation, or worst, death—the chariot, as splendid as it was, crashes and burns. Think of Nietzsche, his arms around a horse, weeping, and declaring, ‘I am the crucified one.
The chariot, or any powerful vehicle or technology, is a boon and a burden. We need preparation, training, and discipline for the chariot not to crash. In the Vajrayana tradition, you practice ngondro, which means ‘going before’—and intense physical and spiritual training developing humility, generosity, clarity of body, speech and mind, and dedication to a master. Like any challenging holistic educational process, it involves much physical, mental, and psychological work. The work ‘fills in the holes of the colander', as the traditional metaphor puts it—or makes it possible for the person to receive divine inspiration. If one doesn’t do the preparatory work, one will destroy the chariot before it can fly.
What is your project, your chariot, and what are you trying to create? Is it solid, is it worthy, is it ready to fly? That is one of the questions that the 7th Arcana, The Chariot, asked us to contemplate.
Justice
Most traditions have a left and a right-hand version of justice. The right hand, symbolised by the sword, applies an unbending universal law; the left hand, represented by the scales, is about jurisprudence and context. For example, the right hand of the law would say, Thou Shall not kill, and the left would say, except in certain circumstances.
In the political world, the right wing is about tradition and keeping the letter of the law—the left is about social justice. The right hand has an explicit and codified morality; the left hand involves implicit ethics. The right hand has no sentimentality—it simply cuts; the left hand weighs the human context. Justice consists in balancing these two often contradictory roles.
In the spiritual world—the right-hand religion has its dogmas and moral laws; the left-hand paths of tantra—indicate certain antinomianism. On the right-hand path, we are told to keep the monastic rules absolutely, regardless of the situation. On the left-hand path, we engage in unconventional activity and sometimes break the law in service of a greater truth.
Justice is a response to sin. To sin means literally to ‘miss the mark’, which doesn’t mean that one is doing anything illegal particularly, but that one is not in alignment with the inner compass or being. We all live in different degrees of sin, which is the human condition, as we cannot always hit the mark or the target. Furthermore, we have inherited an ocean of sin from our family or cultural background, and if you believe Carl Jung, from the collective unconsciousness of the culture.
Some sins are unconscious, and we don’t know why we betray our better judgement; others we perform willingly, out of spite, meanness, or inadvertence. If we look at ourselves honestly, it is best not to cast stones but realise that everyone is a veritable sinner. And that is not such a bad thing either—because if we didn’t sin, we would never learn anything. One needs to sin to repent—another axiom of the left-hand path of justice, which looks at the larger picture.
Much suffering is the consequence of sin or missing the mark. If we are intentionally and systematically unjust, unkind, and cruel—we create suffering. The law could punish us for murdering somebody, or our conscience could cause us to fall into a spiral of shame, self-sabotage, addiction or worse. Our conscience is often the harshest judge.
The inevitability of consequence and cause and effect is called Karma in the Eastern world. The law of Karma states that every action has a result of some kind. While the whole pattern of karma is so complex that it will never be fully clear to us—we can observe the consequences of our positive and negative actions to a certain extent.
People dismiss the concept of karma and reincarnation, but both have a kind of heuristic truth, whether or not we believe in them literally. If we have a ‘multi-lifetime view’, we know that our actions have consequences in a future that goes beyond us. We are less likely to be assholes or killers if we see that karma boomerang will get us back in some way or another and that the scales of justice operate over the long term.
Dostoyevski wrote about karma in his novel Crime and Punishment. He showed that no one could really get away with murder on the spiritual and karmic levels—on the other hand, even a murderer can find redemption. Actions have consequences that ripple beyond our lifetime. The shape of future lifetimes is based on what we do now and what we have done in the past. Time is the great revelator—it shows us who we are in the end. Justice tells us what we do isn’t arbitrary—our actions matter.
Social justice has got a bad rap of late; to be called a social justice warrior has become an insult. The would-be social justice warriors often look for justice in blame and victimhood. Creating a cult of victimhood usually doesn’t help the genuine victim or provide real social justice; instead, it reinforces a ghetto identity, where people nurse each other's wounds for perpetuity. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, real justice begins with the knowledge that “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”
The justice card asks, what right do I have to administer justice? What right do I have to judge others’ vision if there is a mote in my eye? How do I develop the clear judgement to see when I need to be harsh and when I need to be merciful and balance the scales? Harshness without mercy is tyrannical; mercy without justice is naive. We always need to be weighing the balance, and sometimes we need to apply the sword—to our neurotic tendencies, first of all.
This article is part of a consideration of our study group on symbolism and Psychomagic. If you want to become a member and join one of our study groups, please write to me at andrewpgsweeny@gmail.com or check out the events calendar below for more details.