21/6 The Chariot #7

TEMPLE artefact #18

#7 The CHARIOT final version, art by Rian Hughes

SUMMER SOLSTICE SALUTATIONS!

VII. CHARIOT

KEY WORDS – DETERMINATION, WILL, AMBITION, TRIUMPH

The Hebrew letter attributed to this card is Cheth, the fence.

For this one I thought we could go a bit more sci-fi, with a little Jack Kirby, a hint of Alex Grey in the mix.

Traditional depictions of the Chariot show a proud and triumphant figure in the titular chariot led by two spirited horses, or sometimes a brace of lively sphinxes.

We don’t have horses or sphinxes. Our Chariot takes a different approach, which connects it also to Ezekiel’s Chariot from the Bible – the prophet’s vision of God’s personal spectacular transport/Mobius Chair.

Central to the image is a MERKABA – the word means Chariot. New Agey esoteric circles frame the merkaba as the materialized UFO that alchemists and Terence McKenna called the lapis, the Philospher’s Stone or Grail. Mastery of the merkaba requires complete mental control of matter.

The Merkaba is generally represented as a geometrical solid comprising two three sided pyramids fused through one another to make a complex star shape.

Our Charioteer is a cosmic KNIGHT in a cross-legged lotus position. The knight is of ambiguous gender.

Their GOLDEN armor has a gleaming sci-fi finish with plated, segmented design inspired by the shells of crustaceans with ornate flourishes reminiscent of one of Jack Kirby’s celestials voyaging through hyperspace.

Their seven chakra centres in descending order are lit with different colored light:

The UV light floats above the Charioteer’s head. The other six are integrated into their dimension suit.

An INDIGO light in the 3^rd eye position

BLUE at the throat

GREEN at the heart

YELLOW at the solar plexus

ORANGE at the sacrum

RED at the perineum

There are three more lights – two on each shoulder and a smaller one at the centre of the red square on the knight’s beastplate. These lights are colored as though we can see the swimming pool background through three circular holes – or perhaps reflected on mirror panels - adding up to ten lights altogether.

The zodiac sign associated with the card is CANCER so the knight’s helmet has a CRAB motif with the crab shell doubling as a closed VISOR (no-one may look upon the face of the Charioteer and live). The upraised claws creating a crescent shaped crown.

The Charioteer has two horns rising at each shoulder as if a big crescent moon has been fastened to their back.

On their breastplate is a SQUARE WITHIN SQUARE motif – four squares of decreasing size superimposed on one another, representing the material world. Each of the squares has one of the four elemental colours – a red square at the centre, then yellow behind, blue behind that, and framed by the big black square’s border.

Using both hands but without actually touching, the Charioteer carefully manipulates a SILVER BOWL with red liquid inside, tilting it this way and that as it floats in free space between their palms.

This bowl – the Holy Grail in another form - is the Merkaba steering apparatus!

It takes supreme concentration and a delicate co-ordination to pilot this thundering soul machine through the cosmos! Never spilling a drop of the living blood of compassion, while accelerating or decelerating between realities.

At four points are the ‘wheels’ of the chariot – there are spinning ‘atomic orbit’ wheels with spokes a little like the one in the top corner of the famous ‘Flammarion Engraving’ of a cosmic seeker. Or like the image of a neutrino detector from this week’s ‘New Scientist’!

Four elemental heads of the Kerubim sit at the centre of each wheel, angled toward the centre like radiant petals on a flower –MAN on the top (our) left, EAGLE on top right. BULL bottom left. LION bottom right.

Traditional Chariots have a blue howdah-like canopy with stars, here that motif appears as four ‘whirlpools’ descending from the cosmic geometry of the background, like those wireframe images of black holes, draining down into silver lines that enclose the merkaba.

The canopy or ‘four pillars’ effect is created by these four mathematical vortices, whirlpools descending like wireframe stalactites from an overhead surface layer of the hyper ‘pool’ – these whirlpools attenuate into dead straight silver lines then fan out at the bottom again. Similar to drawings of a wormhole – or in this case four wormholes!

The background is suggestive of hyperspace – rendered in Empyrean blue and silver, like reflections on liquid mercury or the rippling light in a swimming pool – giving the impression that our voyager is travelling through an eerie underwater space whose limits can’t be determined. 

For the majestic feel of this card, I am reminded of ‘O Worship the King’ the nigh-on Lovecraftian imperial hymn from 1833 by Sir Robert Grant which we used to have to sing at school. The first two verses induced in me a reliable sense of the all-consuming sublime.

O worship the King

All-glorious above,

And gratefully sing

His power and his love:

Our Shield and Defender

The Ancient of Days,

Pavilioned in splendor

And girded with praise!

O tell of His might

O sing of His grace,

Whose robe is the light,

Whose canopy space.

Whose chariots of wrath

The deep thunderclouds form,

And dark is His path

On the wings of the storm…