soul wings
The Chariot Allegory — rooted in Plato's Phaedrus, where the soul is figured as a winged charioteer driving two horses of contrary nature — functions in the depth-psychology corpus as a persistent structural metaphor for the drama of ego, instinct, and transcendence. Plato's original formulation presents the rational soul straining to govern noble and base impulses on its ascent toward the Forms; the soul-wings that lift or fail this vehicle become the central image of eros-driven development. Within Jungian and post-Jungian literature the allegory undergoes systematic redeployment: Jung himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis, reads the chariot's four wheels as the quaternity of conscious functions — a move that psychologizes Platonic metaphysics into typological structure. Tarot commentators (Nichols, Pollack, Hamaker-Zondag, Jodorowsky) treat the seventh trump as the allegory's popular icon, staging debates about whether the charioteer embodies healthy ego-consolidation, dangerous ego-inflation, or a still-unresolved tension between will and unconscious. Pollack counterpoints Plato's Phaedrus against the Hindu Shiva myth to distinguish triumphant ego-control from genuine spiritual integration. The term thus sits at the intersection of soteriology, typology, and ego-development theory, and its tensions — control versus surrender, conscious will versus autonomous instinct — are never fully resolved across the corpus.
the chariot should have four wheels, to correspond with the four elements or natures. The chariot as a spherical vessel and as consciousness rests on the four elements or basic functions
Jung systematically homologizes the chariot's four wheels with the quaternity of conscious functions, transforming the Platonic vehicle of soul into an archetype of differentiated consciousness.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion
Plato's Phaedrus establishes the founding image of the chariot allegory: the soul's wings are lost or preserved according to the charioteer's skill in governing opposing impulses during the ascent toward truth.
, Phaedrus, -370thesis
The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal... Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides.
Plato grounds the chariot allegory in his proof of the soul's immortality as self-moving principle, establishing the metaphysical basis for the soul-wings image.
, Phaedrus, -370thesis
spiritual victory over evil comes when we can focus all of nature, as well as the unconscious energy embodied in Shiva himself, through the conscious will. These two fables show two different aspects of the idea of will.
Pollack distinguishes the Phaedrus chariot — symbolizing ego-control over unresolved conflict — from the Shiva chariot myth, which represents a deeper integration of unconscious energy through focused spiritual will.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis
she is sorely let and hindered by the animal desires of the inferior or concupiscent steed. Again and again she beholds the flashing beauty of the beloved. But before that vision can be finally enjoyed the animal desires must be subjected.
The introductory summary of the Phaedrus chariot myth frames the soul's journey as governed by the tension between the noble steed aligned with reason and the base steed of concupiscent desire.
, Phaedrus, -370thesis
'If we take the loading of the chariot as the conscious realization of the four functions . . . the question then arises as to how all these divergent factors, previously kept apart . . . will behave, and what the ego is going to do about it.'
Nichols cites Jung directly to argue that the Tarot Chariot symbolizes the ego's inaugural confrontation with the four psychic functions, marking the beginning — not completion — of individuation.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
The paradox of The Chariot is that we must attend to the development of a strong ego, while battling with unconscious drives and impulses which can disturb or deform eg
Hamaker-Zondag identifies the structural paradox of the Chariot Allegory as the simultaneous requirement for ego-strengthening and non-repressive engagement with the unconscious forces symbolized by the contrary sphinxes.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997thesis
the king, set in a frame created by the four posts, also stands for a quintessential element... He acts as a charioteer, a guiding force, centrally located within the psychic vehicle.
Nichols interprets the Tarot charioteer as an internalized guiding principle — the formerly projected royal authority of emperor or pope now integrated as a psychic function within the self.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
it is these which we tune in on when we shut our eyes to outer things and step into our chariots for a voyage within. These images, half glimpsed, sometimes wholly unrecognized, nonetheless shape our lives and actions.
Nichols reframes the chariot as an inward vehicle of active imagination, through which unconscious images — the true drivers of psychic life — become accessible to consciousness.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
The Chariot travels beneath a dais covered by stars, indicating his actions extend to the entire planet... He, crowned, clad, and invested with all the signs of power, represents the value of sacred pride: he recognizes himself as messenger of the cosmos.
Jodorowsky reads the Chariot prince as a cosmic emissary whose controlled power is balanced against the Star's receptive humility, suggesting the allegory encodes a dialectic of sacred action and surrender.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him
Plato elaborates the experiential consequence of the soul-wings motif: the initiate who retains memory of the hyperuranian vision responds to earthly beauty with awe rather than lust, activating the soul's upward momentum.
, Phaedrus, -370supporting
He does not deny that eros is takeover, a form of mania, but he vindicates mania. Let us see how. Change of self is loss of self, according to the traditional Greek attitude.
Carson's reading of Socrates' counter-argument in the Phaedrus vindicates the erotic madness that drives the soul-chariot, reframing the loss of rational control as a necessary condition for ascent rather than a failure of horsemanship.
, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, 1986supporting
The sun god's chariot in Greece and in Rome was pulled by white horses, while the chariots of the night or the moon were pulled by dark horses... In mythology black and white are often not an ethical designation.
Von Franz contextualizes the chariot's horses within comparative mythology, arguing that the colour symbolism of the opposing steeds reflects a cosmological rather than a moral polarity.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
for the growth of the soul's wings; in the boy's absence the personality dries up, and all parts of it cease, alike, to develop. The ferment of the soul is cognitive: a reliable indicator of beauty's presence and of progress towards true understanding.
Nussbaum identifies the soul-wings motif as Plato's figure for cognitive-moral development driven by eros, where the beloved's beauty functions as the necessary spur to psychic growth.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
Psyche chained or bound to the chariot of love; Eros shooting and wounding Psyche; Psyche's wings burnt, or the burnt moth or butterfly, whose name in Greek gives them symbolic identity.
Hillman situates the soul-wings image within the archetypal iconography of Psyche and Eros, noting that the burning of Psyche's wings — her subjugation to love's chariot — recurs as a motif in both ancient art and contemporary dreams.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
being so high above ordinary life, whether on wings or horses or chariots, it considers itself invincible. It can be insensitive to the failures and weakness of ordinary mortal life.
Moore cautions that the puer spirit's identification with chariots and wings represents a dangerous inflation — the soul's celestial vehicle becoming an instrument of detachment from embodied, relational life.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
images of the gods of the seven planets riding in triumphal chariots. This triumph of the planets is based on common Medieval astrological illustrations called the Children of the Planets
Place documents the iconographic lineage connecting the Chariot trump to medieval astrological traditions of planetary gods in triumphal chariots, situating the allegory within Renaissance cosmological imagery.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
the image of the triumph represented the soul's journey from its beginning
Place notes that the Renaissance triumph tradition, from which the Tarot Chariot derives, was already understood as a metaphor for the soul's journey, providing the allegorical substrate the Chariot card inherits.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005aside
chariot(s), 268, 281; fiery, 167; stone, 281n
A brief index entry in Jung's Collected Works records variant chariot images — fiery and stone — attesting to the symbol's distribution across alchemical and prophetic contexts in his broader corpus.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907aside