I’m always pretty stoked when this card comes up in my deck, and in a lot of ways it speaks to the struggle for gender equality.  The Chariot is about taking different sides of something, forces with different agendas, independent pieces with their own purposes and directions, and steering them together to make progress.

This is especially relevant when it comes to understanding intersectional feminism and the work which must be done to move forward for the good of ALL women, not just some.

The important part of this card doesn’t rest on the figure driving the chariot.  The important part is that both horses, a depiction of opposites, are moving together to pull the chariot along.  No part is missing, and the horses have not been freed to avoid the struggle of making them pull together.  The answer here is not to lighten the load or let the stubborn horse go free.  Success means achieving control in unity.  Struggles must be overcome to move forward, they cannot be shoved aside or ignored.  And that comes through hard work and struggle.

Just like all women must find a way to support all women to move towards equality.  We cannot push aside or ignore the struggles of women who we feel are not like us.  We have to all be in this together.

If we’re going to talk about love and related topics from a feminist standpoint, one of the things I definitely would NOT do is fall back on biblical heterosexual images of love pairings as useful symbols.  I think it’s especially important to ditch the Adam and Eve motif here considering that the meaning of the card isn’t really about romantic love as much as it’s about completion.

And I have a real big problem with imagery which calls to mind the idea that a divine being has picked out a “mate” for us who is, among other more biology-related functions, supposed to make us feel “complete”.

I see this card as having more to do with discovering connections to inner passions or finding pieces of ourselves which produce those feelings of completion.  This card isn’t about falling in love with a person, it’s about finding fulfillment through a passionate connection to something in your life.  To rely on traditional images of romantic coupling or divinely destined love strips the fullness from the interpretation as much as it paints a misogynistic image of reality.

After all, Eve wasn’t just a mate to Adam, she was made from part of him.  She never had any identity other than as that “completion” for him.

So out with all that, and in with imagery which avoids all those trappings of misogyny.  First of all, in a deck filled only with female figures, if we are to represent the idea with a couple it should be two females.  But beyond switching out a heterosexual couple for a homosexual one, I think it’s more clear to the meaning of the card itself for the figures to be two iterations of the same soul.  The image isn’t romantic love, then, it’s a woman finding that version of herself she had not fully realized existed before, and letting that side of herself lead the way forward rather than following the path she’d previously walked.

There’s a really weird thing about misogyny and patriarchy where certain activities, pursuits, or skills are relegated to women until there is opportunity to master and profit from them, at which point the highest levels of attainment are reserved primarily for men.  For instance, cooking is women’s work, but executive chefs are most often men.

To me, this card embodies the same idea.  Back at the beginning, the realm of spiritual enlightenment and esoteric knowledge was depicted as feminine with the High Priestess.  She was the mysterious guide to intuition and insight.  But here, when the Fool goes into a temple seeking similar guidance, the sage figure on which the authority and ability to publicly lead others has been bestowed is traditionally depicted as male.  The High Priestess leads in private without the blessing and benefit of an organization behind her, but the Hierophant is enthroned in a temple.  Inner wisdom and sage guidance is wrapped up in the idea of the sacred feminine only until the point where such wisdom and guidance can be made useful to the larger system of authority and power.

The meaning of this card points less to a level of authority held by the figure on the card, though, and more to the level of respect given by the acolytes to the teachings and guidance that figure is able to give.  And while institutional spiritual leadership is most often reserved for men, many traditions place women in positions of respect and community leadership.  The important message of this card is found in the sense that spiritual development and greater wisdom can be found through connection to others, to a larger group to which we belong, and that traditions are important to the process of tapping into that wisdom.  And if we are to depict a traditional spiritual community leader, there are many traditions which embrace women in that role.

Clearly, if the Empress is renamed and removed from her traditional spot, she then gets to step into her rightful place in the deck.  No real Empress would spend her time running around pregnant tending fields of grain.  She would be ruling over her empire.

As history has proven time and time again, women are just as capable as men of maintaining order, instituting structure, and advancing civilization.  What most often stands in the way is not some natural deficiency of skill or ability but resistance driven by sexist beliefs in the nature of a woman’s fitness to lead.  So there is literally no good reason not to depict the authoritative, controlling, aggressive Emperor as female.

It is very important to note, though, that this also means not altering the archetype of the Emperor to soften it once the depiction is female.  We should not pretend that an Empress should or would be any less aggressive, despotic, tyrannical, or warlike.  The interpretation of the card should not lose its potential negative aspects.  We cannot open the full range of aspirational possibilities to women while maintaining fantasies of inherent female goodness.