The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

VII
The Chariot

An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword and corresponding, broadly speaking, to the
traditional description which I have given in the first part. On the shoulders of the victorious hero
are supposed to be the Urim and Thummim. He has led captivity captive; he is conquest on all
planes–in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation. He has thus replied to the
sphinx, and it is on this account that I have accepted the variation of Éliphas Lévi; two sphinxes
thus draw his chariot. He is above all things triumph in the mind.
It is to be understood for this reason (a) that the question of the sphinx is concerned with a Mystery
of Nature and not of the world of Grace, to which the charioteer could offer no answer; (b) that the
planes of his conquest are manifest or external and not within himself; (c) that the liberation which
he effects may leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding; (d) that the tests of
initiation through which he has passed in triumph are to be understood physically or rationally; and
(e) that if he came to the pillars of that Temple between which the High Priestess is seated, he could not open the scroll called Tora, nor if she questioned him could he answer. He is not hereditary royalty and he is not priesthood.