The Chariot
Tarot card meaning, upright and reversed
What it means
Upright
The Chariot is read as victory won by will and control: drive, direction and holding opposing forces together. Waite listed succour and providence, and also war, triumph and presumption.
Reversed
Reversed, it is read as losing direction, or force without control. Waite gave riot, quarrel, dispute and defeat.
In love
Pursuit of love, overcoming obstacles, victory.
In work
Success through effort, overcoming competition.
What is drawn on the card
A crowned, armored prince stands in a stone chariot under a starry canopy, a wand in his hand and crescent moons on his shoulders. Two sphinxes, one black and one white, sit before the chariot, which has no reins; a walled city lies behind.
As Pamela Colman Smith drew it in 1909. Our paintings follow these scenes.
- Hebrew letter
- Cheth
- Sign
- Cancer
The letter and sign are 19th-century occult attributions (Golden Dawn), not part of the card’s origin.
Where the card comes from
- Tarot began as a card game in 15th-century Italy. The earliest record is from Florence in 1440, and the game is still played today in France, Austria and Bologna.
- Reading the cards for fortunes is documented from Bologna around 1750, with ordinary playing decks.
- In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote that the cards came from ancient Egypt. There is no evidence for it, and he wrote before anyone could read hieroglyphs (1822).
- The Hebrew letters and astrological signs on each card are 19th-century French and English occult attributions; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) fixed the set most readers use.
- The scenes follow the 1909 Waite–Smith deck, designed by A. E. Waite and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. The Innerverse cards are our own paintings of those scenes.
Sources: Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980); Morgan Library & Museum, Visconti-Sforza tarot, MS M.630; Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, vol. VIII (Paris, 1781); A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911).
Draw your own card
The Chariot is one of 78. Draw one card or a three-card spread in the Innerverse, read with the same art and the same sources, free.
Or make it daily: one card each morning, with a private note →Want the whole deck? All 78 cards and the guidebook.
Traditional readings, presented as tarot readers have held them. They are a record of a practice, not a prediction.