I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Tuesday Book Club, I share an idea from a book.
[Observe] the Chariot, with its stone-like qualities. Observe the charioteer himself merging into his stone vehicle. The mind that subordinates all things to conscious will runs the risk of becoming rigid, cut off from the very forces it has learned to control. Observe also that the black and white sphinxes ad not reconciled to each other. They look in opposite directions. The charioteer’s will holds them together in a tense balance. If that will should fail, the Chariot and its rider will be torn apart.
Paul Douglas has compared the Chariot to Jung’s idea of the ‘persona’. As we grow up we create a kind of mask to deal with the outside world. If we have dealt successfully with the various challenges of life, then the different aspects symbolized by the other cards will become integrated into this ego-mask. But we can too easily confuse this successful persona with the true self, even to the point that if we try to discard the mask we will fear its loss as a kind of death. This is why the second line of the Major Arcana, which deals precisely with the release of the self from its outer masks, bears Death as its next to last card.
Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Ray and I did a couples Tarot reading before starting our poodle transport road trip this week. The first card we drew, in the Departure position, was the Chariot. the seventh card of the major arcana.
As a card for departure, it was auspicious. It suggested that we were using our will and our resources to move swiftly towards our goal: delivering poodle Kristy to her new home with my sister in New Orleans.
As a card for general perspective, it can suggest too much use of the will, and, as Pollack suggests above, too much reliance on outdated personas created for an earlier era of life.
For my daybook entry for today, which I may not get to until after I return, I’d like to write about how the personas developed in young adulthood must be destroyed in order to live more authentically and meaningfully at midlife.