Beyond Basics Tarot: VII. The Chariot

For those unfamiliar with the symbolic, pictorial language of the tarot, the Chariot is one of the most enigmatic cards in the major arcana to decipher. To interpret the tarot, one must understand its origins. 

In the Anglosphere, the tarot mythos was the brainchild of middle-class and upper-middle-class men of the Victorian and Edwardian eras who were exploring the fringes of spirituality and the more transgressive aspects of non-traditional (i.e. non-Christian) religion. Thus tarot is an ideological and pictorial amalgamation of the spiritual traditions these men had been exposed to and made their own: ancient Occidental, ancient Egyptian, Celtic/Nordic paganism, Judaism, and Christianity in their protestant and catholic variants.