Waite held the character on the The Chariot to be a neophyte,
in that particular stage of mystical development which corresponds
to having triumphed in the Lesser Mysteries, but only now embarking
on the Greater. The Lesser Mysteries of the Eleusinian rites "placed
candidates in a condition of ritual purification, and in this and
other ways were preparatory to the more important experiences which
came after"(1). For Waite, of course, these "more important
experiences" are the various levels of mystical union, all such
experiences still wanting in the charioteer.
The first thing that stands out in Waite's discussion in the
PKT(2) is the contradiction between the image as drawn and as
described. Waite has the charioteer "carrying a drawn sword" while
Pixie Smith has him holding a wand. Far from being a blind, the
miscommunication more likely speaks to the relevances Waite placed on
the Trumps themselves. Waite did not feel The Chariot was an important
card, far from requiring a redesign like the Fool or the Lovers, he
plagiarized the design from Levi. Even if Waite had a reason for
changing the wand (which appears on Levi's symbol) to a sword and may
have even instructed Smith to add the element, he certainly didn't
care enough to check the work. The error seems, in any case, simply a
result of his carelessness.
The PKT continues, "corresponding, broadly speaking, to the
traditional description which I have given in the first part".(3) In
this first part Waite writes "it is really the King in his triumph,
typifying, however the victory which creates kingship as its natural
consequence and not the vested royalty of the fourth card". Later in
the main entry, Waite explicitly denies that the charioteer is vested
or "hereditary royalty". The charioteer's royalty is earned through
conquest.
After mentioning some of the traditional elements, Waite
continues, "He has led captivity captive...", his use of the biblical
reference(4) is expanded by what follows it, "he is conquest on all
planes- in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of
initiation." Just as the Roman practice paraded the choice treasures
and captives in its Triumph, or the Ascended Christ trails after
himself the elect of heaven, the charioteer leads captive his
treasures, the mind, science, and his own spiritual progress.
"He has thus replied to the sphinx, and it is on this account that
I have accepted the variation of Eliphas Levi; two sphinxes thus draw
his chariot." There were probably many reasons Levi's design appealed
to Waite, but the one he singles out is that the charioteer "has thus
replied to the sphinx" and that reply, of course, is "man".
The core of Waite's mystical approach hinged on the understanding
that the way of return to God, the attainment of Mystical Union, lies
within. While exoteric religion, among others, sells a sort of "guy in
the sky", external God and teaches this conception to the uninitiated
masses, Waite's "Mystery of Faith" is, essentially, that most are
seeking God where God won't, can't be found. The work of the neophyte
includes these discoveries. In Waite's ritual advancing the Neophyte
to Zelator(5), the Hegemon instructs, "Man is thus the explanation of
every thing, and the key to this mystery is that God is within." In
his autobiography(6) he writes, "I have spoken of those who have gone
before us in the way: how many Masters of Art, Masters of the Great
Science? It is of them and at their knees that we learned first of God
Who is within, of inward experience and where it may lead the Soul.
But remember always that consensus omnium sanctorum sensus Spiritus
Sandcti est, on the firm understanding that this is the Holy
Spirit of Man, for there is none other which testifies. Churches and
Councils proclaim the truth of God: it is always the truth of Man, at
the value of Man and his measures. There is no Divine Revelation which
is not the work of Man on the part of God. The prophets speak on His
part and in His Name, on the faith of personal revelations: it is
always Man who speaks, for there is no other voice in all this
universe of ours." And just a line or two further on, speaking again
of Union, "It must be that state, however, in which the Divine within
us and all that is Divine beyond subsist in unity: est una sola
res. The words are ineffable, incomprehensible. It lies
behind the subject and the object. It is not realized by the pairing
of thesis and antithesis or any other postulated opposites. It is
without any man and within him, magnum et infinitum mate. It is
infinitely great and little; but is not understood by their
comparison. Yet it would prove in attainment a state of our own being,
though now a world unrealised. From however far away, it sends
messages even now, remote intimations. It tells us that the Word of
God is our own Word, and that there is no other which ever will be
heard by us in any height or deep." As he says elsewhere(7), "But the
first and greater journey is that which takes us on the quest of the
inward God, which discovers to us that the Divine within us is that
which is Divine in the universe".
"He is above all things triumph in the mind." In "The Way of
Divine Union", in describing "The Reordination of Life and
Mind" Waite writes, "That which is understood as natural law enforces
and imposes itself; but- as things now are- the Divine Law has to be
taken into the heart by an act of will. This initial act is the
beginning of a life of valiance, and there is much, under the best of
circumstances, which must be held to go before and lead up to it. I
think that the whole process might be symbolised in terms of chivalry.
That which precedes the act corresponds, among other things, to the
watching of the arms, though we could search out earlier analogies."
To extend the Tarot analogy, we see here first the act of will
typified by the Magician. Waite continues, "The act itself is like the
sacrament of knighthood, and it is followed by a life of warfare. Many
knights died in warfare, and the glory was with them therein. But some
reached a term when they laid down their arms with honor, and then
they dwelt henceforth in castles or palaces, as barons or princes of
old. In the life of spiritual valiance many die on the way, still in
the season of warfare, and the recompense hereof is with them whose
face is set towards Jerusalem. But there are some who have so striven
that they can lay down their arms- surely in more than honour- because
they have attained the outer courts and precincts of the Holy City.
The strife has ceased, for the reason that conformity is established
and the higher law has been engrafted within us. This suspends the
active exercise of isolated will, seeing that we will in God- even as
we breathe the ordinary air of earth."(8) The Triumph of the charioteer
carries him into the "outer courts and precincts of the Holy City".
The PKT continues, "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."
After telling us of the triumph of the charioteer, Waite draws
severe restrictions against his successes.
(a). The world of nature is what is. The world of grace is a
world of experience, specifically, the experience of Union. The things
in the charioteer's train- mind, science, spiritual progress- are all
of a low, non-mystical order.
(b). His victories are limited to the mundane.
(c). There are two things in "the liberation which he effects may
leave himself in the bondage of the logical understanding;". Waite
describes the process that leads to this "liberation". "The
beginning of the inward life is such a concern with spiritual things
that what is at first performed by the work of applied attention- as
in the study of any given subject- becomes a habit of the mind. In the
growth of this habit an interior condition is reached, of which it can
be affirmed validly that the thought of God and of Divine Things is
implied always when it is not expressed within us. This is dedication
of the mind, which connotes the heart's dedication, and the practical
duty therein is that of maintaining the high honour of the work in all
the ways of life. Herein is the faith of dedication, and the keeping
of this faith becomes itself a habit. As in the code of the world, the
relations and affairs of man, those to whom honourable action is, so
to speak, native do not have to be reminding themselves and watching
over their deeds incessantly lest suddenly they should decline from
honour, so it comes about on a time that those in this faith of
dedication are ever in the state of honour towards God and His inward
light. It must not be understood that there are no declensions
whatever, because the flesh is weak, or that temptation ceases, but
the will towards evil is reduced to a vanishing point. There is also a
stage when the desire after God has broken up all the barriers and has
burnt all the traps and snares which encompass our daily ways; but we
are far on the path then, while I am speaking now of initial states
and things which lead up to proficiency. That is reached, I think,
when in the midst of all its activity- and it may be very active
indeed, in and without the world- our life has become a contemplation,
and we know of the Presence within. Beyond this there are deeper and
yet deeper stages, of which something must be said hereafter."(9)
The neophyte, in habitually denying the world is liberated from
its control. And the danger of bondage?
"But in the second place, there is what has been termed above an
intellectual difficulty which hinders certain people. In the old
literature of Christian sanctity, and in some at least of its latest
developments, they find the notion of spiritual progress connected
with an advanced type of asceticism, by which alone the neophyte,
His soul well-knit and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."(10)
The neophyte, in his victory over those things of the manifest
planes must be cautious against thinking that the simple act of self-
denial is meritorious or getting caught up in asceticism. Such leads
to bondage in the search for liberation.
(d). Again the low order of the accomplishments.
(e). The reference to the High Priestess, who is the epitome of
spiritual aspiration, is another parameter gauging the low order of
attainment typified by the card.
"He is not hereditary royalty and he is not priesthood." The
remark against the charioteer's priesthood is probably an answer to
Christian- Waite includes this sort of hidden commentary on Christian
in many of the majors- who wrote, "Z-7 expresses in the divine
world the Septenary, the domination of Spirit over Nature: in the
intellectual world, the Priesthood and the Empire: in the physical
world, the submission of the elements and forces of matter to the
Intelligence and to the labours of Man."
The Word is lost, the final HEH is separated, the Grail is
withdrawn. And for Waite, this meant that the implicates of the Latin
Church are, like the others, lost. And as the third grade of
Masonry substitutes a phoney, the Church has substituted phonies of
its own in the form of dogma and doctrine. "They contain the whole
marrow of 'bourgeoisie', but they contain also the shadow of the great
mysteries revealed occasionally". And in the Eucharist, and more
specifically in that Eucharist as represented in some sections of the
Grail Cycles, Waite saw one of those mysteries revealed. The work of
Robert De Borron contains reference to an "arch-natural" Eucharistic
Sacrament, the True Eucharist. The Risen Christ had Himself taught the
rite to Joseph of Aremathea, a true offering of Bread and Wine,
fashioned after "the Order of Melchisadek", that is, a priesthood
without formal and sanctioned ordination. The rite has passed out of
existence because the Secret Words of Consecration had been lost. And
just as certainly, the Secret Words for Waite are words of Union. In
the "The Viaticum of Daily Life", one of Waite's Eucharistic
Rituals(11), these words are "In God I am thou, my Brother" and "In
Him I am He". The charioteer is not Priesthood, again by virtue of his
low order. He has never experienced Union even in part, and as he has
not experienced Union, he cannot know the Secret Words.
The sacrament of high
Aspiring human love,
Spotless and awful, raised
To one White Throne above,
And there undimm'd, undazed!
And ah! most blessed feast
Of wonder, to behold
The sacraments no priest
has ever bought or sold
Nor saint need e'er dispense!
***
1. "Occult Review" magazine; March 1919, p. 170. From Waite's regular
column, "Periodical Literature".
2. "Pictorial Key to the Tarot"; Rider, 1911.
3. ibid.; p. 15.
4. Ephesians 4,
7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure
of the gift of Christ.
8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led
captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
5. "The Ceremony of Advancement in the 1=10 Grade of Zelator; Newly
Constructed from the Cipher Manuscripts, and Issued by the Authority
of the Concealed Superiors of the Second Order, to Members of
Recognized Temples". Privately printed, 1910.
6. "Shadows of Life and Thought"; Rider, 1937. pp. 244, 245.
7. "Lamps of Western Mysticism", p. 295.
8. "The Way of Divine Union"; Rider, 1905. p.
9. "Lamps of Western Mysticism", p. 29.
10. ibid.; p. 26.
11. "Hermetic Papers of A. E. Waite", R. A. Gilbert; Aquarian, 1987.