The Chariot

Arcana

Major Arcana — one of the twenty-two

Number

VII — card 7 of the sequence

Place in the sequence

eighth of twenty-two

Numbered alongside

the four Sevens of the Minor Arcana

Upright

Control, willpower, success, determination

Reversed

Lack of direction, aggression, no control

Listing position

card 8 of 78 as the deck is written out

Nothing on this page is calculated from your birth details or your name — the readings below are the traditional attributions for The Chariot, written plainly. The one part of it that is arithmetic, and exact, is how often a card of this kind actually turns up; that has its own section further down.

What The Chariot means

Willpower wins. Harness your focus; two opposing forces inside you can work together if you steer.

The Chariot is numbered VII, card 7 of the twenty-two, and Major Arcana cards are read as the large theme of a stretch of life rather than as the day-to-day events the four suits describe. A Minor card puts one subject — the work, the feeling, the argument, the money — at a particular stage; The Chariot names the chapter all of that is happening inside.

Its keyword line — control, willpower, success, determination — is the short form for a grid, not a second meaning. When The Chariot lands beside two Minor cards, the usual reading is that it outranks them: they describe the events, The Chariot describes what the events are for.

The Chariot reversed

Lack of direction, aggression, no control

Reversed, The Chariot does not become its opposite. VII is the same chapter either way; the reversal turns it inward, or slows it, or points at the version of control that has gone wrong. On a chapter as large as VII that is a real difference in tone rather than a different card, which is why The Chariot reversed is written here as lack of direction, aggression, no control and not as the opposite of control.

Plenty of readers do not use reversals. Do that and The Chariot keeps one meaning, and the cards around it decide whether the chapter it names is arriving well or badly.

Where The Chariot sits in the sequence

The Chariot stands at VII, between The Lovers (VI) and Strength (VIII). Read as a sequence — and most readers do read it as one — the twenty-two run from a first step to a completion, so The Chariot arrives after love, harmony, relationships, alignment of values and hands over to inner strength, bravery, compassion, focus.

The number VII

The Chariot is numbered 7, a single digit, so there is nothing to reduce: it is already the root the larger numerals reduce towards. Going the other way, The Tower (XVI) reduces to VII, which makes The Chariot the plainer statement of a number that card carries in a more worldly form.

The same number reaches the Minor Arcana directly: the four Sevens — Seven of Wands, Seven of Cups, Seven of Swords and Seven of Pentacles — are the day-to-day version of what The Chariot names as a theme. The test in four different subjects, against one chapter of a life.

Reading The Chariot in a spread

A Major in a three-card spread usually reframes the other two rather than sitting level with them. The Chariot in each position:

• First — the setting. The Chariot as the theme already in place behind the question: control, willpower, success, determination.
• Second — the situation. VII as what the matter is actually about now, which generally outranks whatever the Minor cards beside it are describing.
• Third — the direction. The Chariot as a chapter opening rather than an event: the position where a Major reads least like a prediction and most like a description of where things are heading.

In a love reading

The Chariot describes the theme a relationship is inside rather than an event inside it — control, willpower, success, determination applied to two people. That is a broader claim than any Cups card makes, and a vaguer one, which is why VII usually wants the cards either side of it before it says anything useful.

In a career reading

On a work question The Chariot answers about the direction rather than the task: not whether the report gets filed but whether the chapter you are filing it in is the one you meant to be in.VII on its own will not tell you what to do on Monday; read it with a Pentacles or Wands card beside it and that card supplies the practical half The Chariot leaves out.

How often The Chariot actually comes up

This is the part of a card page that can be checked, so it is worth stating exactly. Three cards drawn from seventy-eight means any named card — The Chariot included — appears in one three-card spread in 26, or 3.8% of the time. No card in the deck is rarer than another, and any page telling you its own card is unusual to draw is wrong about arithmetic rather than about tarot.

• At least one of the twenty-two Major Arcana appears in 63.6% of three-card spreads. A "big card" showing up is the ordinary case, not a sign.

Reversals do not change any of that. Whether The Chariot lands upright or reversed is a separate coin from whether it lands at all, which is worth remembering when a reversed card feels like it was aimed at you.

The full set of these figures, including what the most-feared cards actually add up to, is on the tarot page.

The Chariot — common questions