Month of July: Take off the ego mask and find the true self

our spiritual and psychological journey through the imagery of the Tarot and the astrological cycle of the year continues. As stated in the last article of this series, the worldly sequence of the Tarot, the second series, is nearing its end and now finds its conclusion with “The Chariot”. Just as summer approaches its climax in July – three to six weeks after the summer solstice that we have just celebrated – the Chariot represents the culmination of the maturity of the adult human personality. The time quality of the zodiacal sign “Cancer”, which dominates July, helps him to develop beyond this and leads over into the next sequence.

The previous cards have dealt with the rules of society and in this process formed our personality. The charioteer on our card today has achieved a certain mastery in the worldly sphere – over his mind, passions and feelings – with the power of his will. But he only controls them; he is still far from spiritual mastery or even enlightenment. In order to achieve this, he needs the lessons that the Tarot cards of the third series, described as “turning inwards”, and which we have already discussed in the previous articles of this series. So only August with the opening card of the third row is missing until we have gone through the cycle once.

The trump card “The Chariot” in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck is overflowing with symbolism. An understanding of symbols is extremely important in the individuation process as described by C.G. Jung. For although symbols can be described in language, they also lead beyond language into realms of the indescribable. We can classify a flower by the wayside and think “flower” or its botanical name, tick it off and move on. But we can also be impressed by the beauty, tenderness and energy of this living thing and have an immediate experience that we may not be able to describe properly in words. In the same way, we can look at the symbol underneath the charioteer, on the “bonnet” of the chariot, so to speak, and let ourselves be impressed by it. A phallic shape penetrates a round shape and above it two wings spread out. What does this trigger in us? Does it only trigger erotic fantasies because our mind has immediately translated it into corresponding images, or can we sense something of the unity of the spirit with the realm of sensations and intuitions, i.e. the unity of the masculine with the feminine principle within us and the freedom that arises from this, symbolized by the two spread wings above?

As an adult personality and with the power of his personal will, the charioteer has established a mature sexuality which he has under control, he has not yet transcended it. It is part of a satisfying life for him, but does not yet lead him to divine ecstasy. This is where the time quality of the zodiac sign Cancer can help him. Those born under this sign live, so to speak, between water and land, just like the animal that is the godfather of the sign. The crab comes up from the depths of the unconscious, the water, to the light of day and so cancer-born people live between feeling and understanding, have a caring character and an open ear for the worries of their fellow men. However, they protect themselves from the outside world with an armour because they are so sensitive and sensible. They are described by spiritual astrology as people with great soul power, who always have something mysterious about them. With all this, however, they are extremely strong-willed, which is why “The Chariot” of the Tarot is assigned to them, which stands for the human will that controls the contradictions between reason and feeling. The two sphinxes pulling the chariot – although neither harness nor reins can be seen because the charioteer steers them exclusively with the power of his will – look in opposite directions. If the charioteer did not hold them together with his will, the sphinxes would tear him and his chariot apart. “Enigmatic as a sphinx” has entered our language as a figure of speech. Just as the Gemini, who precedes the Cancer, simply endures or ignores the puzzling contradictions of life, or overrides them with his airiness, the Cancer controls them with his will. Cancer is a female sign of the zodiac and is ruled by the Moon, the empress of darkness, to whom the German language quite wrongly prefixes a masculine article; it should correctly read “die Mond” or “die Mondin”. This shows how insufficiently language and civilization often deal with the realities of the archetypal unconscious or fail to deal with them in ignorance. (see also the illustration of the engraving “Luna as empress of Cancer”, Hans Sebald Beham, 1539, on page 1 of this article).

Those born in Cancer can also be moody, oversensitive and rebellious. The charioteer on our Tarot card is not like that at all. He and his chariot stand there as if carved in stone, almost like a monument, the chariot seems bigger than the city behind it. Pollack writes: “The mind that subjects all things to its conscious will runs the risk of freezing and thus being cut off from the very forces it has learned to control”. (Rachel Pollack: “TAROT – 78 Stufen der Weisheit”, p. 80, 15th German Edition 2019, IRIS bei Neue Erde GmbH)

Carl Jung’s concept of the “persona” states that as we grow up, we gradually acquire a kind of mask in order to be able to deal with the demands of society, especially in the professional sphere, as consistently as possible, regardless of our true feelings and moods. The results of the confrontations with the demands of ” Emperor and Pope”, which we have discussed in the previous articles, become components of this “ego mask”. None of us can do without such a mask, it is essential for survival. But some people, like the charioteer on our Tarot card, confuse the persona with the true self. Such people are then unable to take off the persona mask and show their true self. They fear that if they lose the mask they will die or vanish into thin air. How often have I heard in the course of psychotherapy: “If I give up my identification with all these roles, as you suggest, Mr. Schuber, what will be left of me? Who am I if I am no longer wife, daughter, lover and mother, no longer the power woman at work and the jester in my circle of friends? Will I still exist at all?”

We already discussed this problem in the November episode of this series, in which the scorpion in connection with the tarot card “Death” was the topic. The question is whether the persona controls us or whether we simply use it in a professional environment as a useful tool that we can effortlessly discard on the clothes rack of life.

There is a reason why the card chooses the motif of the charioteer. Ever since the invention of the wheel, successful warlords, emperors, kings, popes and other heroes have been presented to the cheering people in a chariot as part of a parade. Among these rulers, those who believe their successful persona to be their true self are probably in the majority. A particularly tragic figure who failed to do so and whose demise is surrounded by two parades is certainly former US President John F. Kennedy, who already had to serve in the last article of this series. On the one hand, he was shot in his open car as part of a large parade and, on the other, his coffin was pulled by a horse-drawn carriage during the parade for his funeral. The horse-drawn carriage was followed by a riderless horse called “Black Jack”, which was led by a soldier by the halter and rebelled violently against him, bucking throughout the journey to the cemetery. What tragic symbolism at the end of a life in which there was such a huge gap between persona and true self, of which, incidentally, Kennedy was painfully aware at moments. Yet he did not find the strength to defy the overbearing expectations of his powerful family, that only found the horse that followed his coffin. Interestingly, various Hindu myths associate the horse with death, while Freud always saw it as a symbol of the sexual energy of the libido in his interpretation of dreams. The horse that followed the coffin of the sex-addicted president combined both symbols.

With its sensitivity and its access to the world of the unconscious, the time energy of the zodiac sign Cancer can help to detach from the identification with ego/persona/karmic personality and turn towards the true self, the inner self, the third row of the Tarot. Historical examples of Cancer-born people who (partially) succeeded in this are plentiful: The writers Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway and Erich-Maria Remarque were born in this sign, as were other important artists: Edgar Degas, Camille Corot, Peter Powell Rubens, Marc Chagall. The engineer, inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla was born in this sign on 10 July 1856. The soulful French singer Mireille Mathieu is a Cancer-born, as is the famous Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Many current stars such as Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep, as well as the new Queen Consort of England, were born under this sign. The long tragic liaison of the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles, with the Prince of Wales, Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, now King Charles III, has an interesting historical parallel that also suggests a reincarnation connection: Charles’ great-great-grandfather Edward “Bertie” VII was the great love of Alice Keppel, the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Consort. Alice was not granted such a happy ending, she remained the eternal mistress of Bertie, who died in 1910 after only 9 years of reign. Like his great-great-grandson Charles, he waited 59 years for his accession to the throne.

In the symbolism of this Tarot card “The Chariot” we find references to all the previous cards. The staff points to the magician, the water, the sphinxes and the curtain we also find in the High Priestess, the green earth we know from the empress, the city symbolizes the emperor, the shoulder blades are supposed to represent those worn by the respective High Priest of Jerusalem, they thus symbolize the hierophant and at the same time establish a reference to the High Priestess through their shape, which is reminiscent of moonlike faces. The lingam-yoni symbol (staff in disc) on the front of the chariot symbolizes the lovers. The glowing square on his chest symbolizes the pulsating nature and points to the sensual world of the empress. The eight-pointed star on its crown is an intermediate between that same square of the material world and the circle of the spiritual world. The wheels of the chariot float above the water, so the charioteer draws his energy from the unconscious. The chariot itself, however, stands on the earth. Thus it has no direct contact with the unconscious. If we take all this into an overall picture, we have a rather exact description of the typical, outer personality of an adult human being of our time, who is convinced that he can control and dominate everything with his ratio and reason, his knowledge and above all his will. It is a fairly accurate description of our civilization, which orders the supposed chaos of nature and uses the raw materials of the natural world to grow food and build dwellings. This civilizationgives things a name and some members of this civilization even go so far as to claim that anything that does not have a name and cannot be scientifically described and sorted does not exist. However, those who elevate the limitations of language to dogma run the risk of becoming a stone monument to their ego, like the charioteer, and of closing themselves off completely to the spiritual dimension.

No one will want to deny the necessity of civilization and language, but the Tarot confronts us again and again with the uncomfortable question of who rules whom. Do we understand the injunction “Subdue the earth!” only literally and in terms of the outer world, or do we first apply it to our own worldly consciousness, which we may subdue and subordinate to our spiritual consciousness?

Willpower alone cannot always carry us; sometimes, like Oedipus, we have to learn to yield to the gods so that we do not petrify in our persona and can actually steer our life’s chariot to victory. This victory usually has nothing to do with external achievements and conquests. The time quality of Cancer in July can help us with this.