Like an overworked bread dough, I've spent too long futzing with the idea of this latest newsletter and now it's tough and close textured and kinda flat but I really want to get something out for June so I'm just going to remember that I started this as a low stakes low pressure writing project and here we go.
This month saw me going to 5 different locations (last one on this coming Saturday) in and around Klang Valley to do pay what you can tarot readings for mostly strangers. It was a really interesting experience, and I loved that through planning it I was leaning into the social energies of Gemini season (I'm usually a real homebody who speaks to the same like, 4 people every day). Surprising nobody I’m sure, everyone came to the cards essentially asking for direction, and to know what was ahead. So often people come to get tarot readings when they're not sure what else to do, when they feel stuck, or like they want to cash in one of their last hope tokens to see if something, anything, can move them from where they are.
The Chariot came up a bit, more often than it usually does in the readings I do - for others, or myself. I note this only because sometimes I have a hard time figuring out how to articulate The Chariot beyond the usually platitudes of movement and direction and momentum. I wish often I could convey instead the mental movie montage I invoke when the card shows up: of the scenery passing you by as your train rockets forward, as the hissing of rushing wind past your ears, as the vast unrolling of the hours on a long road trip when your body and the bodies of your fellow travellers become one with the road, the vehicle, the landscape, all movement.
In reading this column called Ask a Cancer: Why Do You Cry So Much?, I found out that The Chariot is actually associated with the zodiac sign Cancer! Which I'm sure I've heard about before but had forgot entirely until now. I'm not that interested in the interpretations I could find through a cursory search on what this means, so I'll share something I loved from the column instead (read the whole thing, it's pretty good).
Gala describes the cyclical growth of a crab, and how they outgrow their shells and undertake a vulnerable molting process to leave that old home and build/find themselves a new one that fits. Here’s Stephanie K. Hopkins' answer, in part:
"What strikes me most is how in this molting phase, the old becomes acutely visible against the new. Before, the old was just the way things are. But suddenly, the old is revealed as a story. Sometimes, I dive into change impulsively, but then I often end up in the same story with different circumstances. It's the slower change, the fully molted one, the one that often feels painful and endless as it's happening, that ends up sticking. But first I've got to be in the uncomfortable stage of being both old and new for a bit. For example, maybe I'm leaving behind an old story about "strength as toughness" and growing into a new story about "strength as having the courage to be receptive," but I catch myself applying the old value of toughness to this new way of being when I give myself a hard time for not being receptive enough."
Maybe this is also Chariot energy, being caught in the tension of what you're leaving (without feeling perhaps like you’ve completely left) and what you're heading towards (whether you know it or not, whether it materializes or not). In those baking backseats, in those cushioned train seats holding paper cups of slightly-too-bitter tea, in the recycled air of an plane gliding over clouds, there is a sense of being nowhere in the bigger story of going somewhere. Arrival feels mildly implausible, but it is hoped for.
There's a nothingness to the Chariot, for me. The blankness of external velocity being enacted upon your physical form. Movement, yes, the will to move, yes. But also a kind of surrendering, to the momentum. The Chariot of the Slow Holler deck, one of my favourites, depicts a figure lying in the bed of their truck with their dog, looking up at the stars. And that's perhaps the closest visual depiction I've found so far of how I feel about this card. It reminds me of another favourite of mine, this line from the song Hymn, by Fleurie: anxious in my roaming, stranded on the move.
There's a searching in that nothingness of the Chariot, a waiting, a silent challenge in that waiting for the Universe to show you something, to move you from wherever you are and show you all of this (whatever this is for you) is worth it. Eventually, someday, maybe soon, soon enough so you can stop and rest your feet for once, and rest your anxious heart too.
Previously, I wrote about North and South Nodes and being an INFJ and some stuff that in hindsight also has Chariot energy. If you'd like to subscribe, click here. Please feel free to share this newsletter with a friend 💌