The History of the Chariot Card

The Chariot card raises some interesting questions for someone trying to unravel the early history of the tarot. The original Italian titles of the cards tend to be more abstract and allegorical, rather than concrete like the familiar Tarot de Marseille titles ("Love" vs. "The Lovers", for example). In fact, when one uses the early Italian titles, it is tempting to see the entire sequence of cards between Pope and Star as allegories of abstract concepts, such as Love, Time, and Death. If the Chariot is such an allegory, then it is curious that it is given a concrete name ("Chariot" rather than, say, "Victory"). Let's first look at some of the basic facts about the card in early decks.

In the earliest Italian sources, it is referred to as "Il Carro" (the Chariot), or sometimes "Il Carro Triumphale" (the Triumphal Chariot). In most designs, the card shows the predictable figure of a regal warrior in a chariot drawn by two horses. He usually holds a scepter, sword, or orb to indicate his dominion. He is often crowned. In the Minchiate and Visconti-Sforza cards, however, the figure is female. The Visconti-Sforza charioteer looks like the other noble women depicted in this deck; it is possible that she is Bianca Maria Visconti. The Minchiate version shows a nude maiden holding a banner or stretch of drapery. It is easy to regard her as an allegorical personification of victory or some similar concept.

The Tarot de Marseille design is unremarkable except for its crudeness of execution: the early woodcarvers vouldn't cope with the complexity of drawing the two horses realistically head-on, so their hindquarters were simply ignored! In some versions, they almost seem to be a single, two-headed creature. One of the earliest Marseille-type designs is seen in the Vieville Tarot from about 1650. Notice that the horses have human faces! Bob O'Neill says they are sphinxes, but they just make me think of Mr. Ed.

The greatest variation in the ordering of the cards in the early tarots has to do with the arrangement of the cards between the Pope and the Hanged Man. Almost every permutation was tried somewhere, at some time! Still, it is possible to discern some patterns. The cards consist of three virtues (Temperance, Justice, Fortitude) and cards possibly representing worldy powers (Love, Chariot, Wheel of Fortune, and Time (the Hermit)). In the southern tradition (Bologna, Florence, Sicily), the three virtues are placed together, with worldly powers coming before or after. In the eastern tradition (Ferrara and Venice), there was a tendency to pair off virtues with worldly powers. Finally, in the western tradition (Milan, Marseille, and Marseille descendents), worldly powers were paired together and "capped off" with a virtue. Each of these strategies no doubt aided card players in remembering which card was higher; the western arrangement seems to me the most subtle and "philosophical"; the southern one the most direct and commonsensical.

The presence of the Triumphal Chariot among the tarot trumps is one of several pieces of evidence linking the tarot with the triumphal parades that were popular in Italy during the period when the tarot was created. In Petrarch's 14th-century poem "I Trionfi", a series of six allegorical triumphs parade before the reader, each more powerful than the last. The Triumph of Love is followed by the Triumph of Chastity, leading Gertrude Moakley to conjecture that the Chariot depicts the Triumph of Chastity, with attendant virtues such as Temperance. This is an interesting possibility, especially in the context of the Visconti-Sforza cards with their virtuous lady charioteer. The idea raises some awkward questions, though. If the card depicting the Triumph of Love is called "Love", why isn't the card depicting the Triumph of Chastity called "Chastity"? And why, of all the triumphs, does only Chastity get to ride in a chariot? Further difficulties are raised when we entertain the possibility that the original Chariot card may have depicted a male warrior, which is a more common image in tarot designs generally.

What can we conclude? I think it is possible that the original tarot, or Game of Triumphs as it was called, was trying to satisfy several different objectives. We know that one of these early allegorical card games (Marziano's cards) was conceived in broad outline by the duke (Filippo Maria Visconti) and passed on the court scholar to refine. If the tarot was created in this fashion, perhaps the powerful patron specified that it should be a Game of Triumphs, including such triumph-related subjects as the Chariot, Death, Virtues, and so on. The scholar would then have the demanding task of fitting the patron's pet subjects into an intellectually plausible array.

So in Milan, for example, the simple image of the Chariot (with male warrior) is paired off with the Love, suggesting the age-old dichotomy of "Love and War". This connection is made nearly explicit in the Tarocchi del Mantegna, made in Ferrara but obviously closely connected with the Visconti-Sforza cards in some way. In this series, the figure shown upon a chariot is the planetary war god Mars. In the eastern tradition, the Chariot is paired off against a virtue (typically Temperance or Justice), perhaps suggesting a conflict between violent, martial bloodlust and Christian self-restraint. In the southern tradition, the Chariot is elevated above the three virtues and even above the Wheel of Fortune, and thus takes on a very positive connotation of victory and mastery over the powers of worldly life, quite consistent with the elegantly allegorical iconography of the cards in these decks.

Actually, there is an interesting lesson in the integrity and flexibility of archetypes here. If the tarot had been designed as a straight-forward array of allegories, with the Chariot replaced by a direct "War" or "Victory" allegory, we would be deprived of enjoying the multi-faceted connotations of the Chariot as a living emblem. As a symbol, it evokes thoughts of mastery, control, vanquishing the enemy, receiving the adulation of one's subjects, and being honored, but also tyrrany, violence, war, vengeance, brutality, hubris, and megalomania. The Chariot represents all these things to us today. And, if we can judge by the range of images and variety of cards it was juxtaposed with the early tarots, it signified all these things to the earliest tarot designers as well.

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