RIDER (The Chariot) — Lyrics From Upcoming FVNERAL Album
The Chariot Reversed 🛞
Ghost 8 of my FVNERAL tarot album
(Keep scrolling for lyrics)
Thank you for being here at all.
This project exists because I need the music I’m making. If it leaves breadcrumbs for anyone else, that’s a gift—but first, this is my study. My mirror. My way of learning how my own mind works.
FVNERAL is my magickal tarot experiment:
22 Major Arcana, flipped and dragged into present-day nervous reality.
Each card becomes a ghost— a version of me that formed to survive.
Tarot, to me, is a map of the mind. One that I’m trying to learn.
THE GHOST:
RIDER is the ghost of The Chariot / Cancer.
She’s the part of me that only feels safe while moving.
The part that calls burnout “focus.”
The part that treats stillness like a threat.
I wrote this while my back was seized up for over a week—life finally calm, roof not leaking, fridge full—while my body stayed braced for the next disaster anyway.
That’s the Rider.
A soft creature in war-armor, sprinting long after the danger is gone.
WHAT THIS GHOST IS REALLY ABOUT
The Rider isn’t just movement.
She’s addicted to forward.
If she isn’t advancing, she thinks she’s decaying.
She doesn’t feel alive because of progress—
she feels alive against the fear of stopping.
The fear is ancient.
Before she ever called it ambition, it was survival.
Keep moving or something catches you.
But nothing’s chasing her anymore.
She’s just haunted by momentum.
She turns healing into homework.
Rest into failure.
Stillness into suspicion.
HOW SHE LEARNED THIS
There’s a kind of control in how she loves.
She overfunctions.
Outgives.
Overprepares.
She thinks she’s being generous, but really she’s saying:
If I handle everything, I can’t be left.
It looks like service.
It’s actually self-defense that learned how to dress nicely.
Underneath it all is a terror she never got language for:
being unseen unless she’s in motion.
She never learned the kind of attention that comes without performance.
THE PAIN / FEAR SPLIT (THE CHARIOT MECHANIC)
This was the clearest insight for me while writing this song:
Pain and fear do different jobs.
Pain says: choose.
Pain is the horse. It creates the crossroads.
It says: Pick a direction.Fear says: move.
Fear is the saddle.
It says: Go now. Don’t think.
Together they form the Chariot tension:
Pain = decision.
Fear = compulsion.
That’s the split between will and reflex.
Between choice and sprinting.
WHY MY BODY CARRIES THIS GHOST
It still amazes me how fast a posture becomes permanent.
My shoulders stay coiled even when there’s no threat.
My thighs brace for sudden stops.
My upper back hums like it’s holding a yoke.
Back pain is the Rider’s handwriting:
I can’t carry calm.
Ease feels like a setup.
So tension plays in the background like static.
CANCER + THE CHARIOT (THE DEEP PARADOX)
Most people treat The Chariot like a “go go go!” card.
To me, it’s become the opposite.
Cancer is the crab—soft, intuitive, sensitive.
The Chariot is the armor.
Put them together and you get one of the deepest paradoxes in the deck:
Massive momentum.
Massive sensitivity.
A child who learned to run so young she became exceptional at it.
Everything is safe now… so why does my body still sprint?
HOW THE RIDER SHOWS UP DAY TO DAY
When Rider energy flares, I notice:
I clean random corners
I refresh apps for no reason
I add tasks to lists that already overwhelm me
My thoughts go military
My speech speeds up
My heart races
I plan escape routes
I walk on treadmills like something’s behind me
Life is quiet now.
But my shoulders live like the worst just called.
WHAT THIS SONG IS DOING
Each FVNERAL track is an ego death.
Not “healing” as fixing—but burying survival costumes that have expired.
Some ghosts are past versions of me.
Rider isn’t.
This one is current.
Which is why it hit harder.
This song is self-hypnosis.
A way of learning out loud.
The Chariot reversed isn’t about stopping.
It’s about reclaiming motion as choice instead of compulsion.
Not running from anything anymore—
just noticing I’ve been running out of habit.
CROW’S ROLE IN THIS SONG
Every ghost argues. Crow answers.
The ghost is my ego.
Crow is my higher self—the part that can see the whole room at once. She’s just watching me sprint in circles with my keys in my hand.
Ghost says: Speed is how we survive.
Crow says: Speed is how you avoid your life.
Her correction is simple and brutal:
“Ride when you choose to, not when old fear alerts you.”
The FVNERAL So Far:
Magician: naming the ghost
Priestess: drowning and surfacing
Empress: feeding the dead part
Emperor: dropping the blueprint
Hierophant: rusting keys
Lovers: choosing a self
Chariot: slowing the sprint that once saved me
Letting the horse breathe.
Learning how to step without fleeing.
WHY I’M SHARING THIS
I write from where I am.
From who I’ve been.
From who I want to be.
These blogs are my compiled notes, my study, my meaning-making.
If you’re reading, thank you for being here at all.
And if you’re someone who can’t relax unless you’re overdoing it—
who feels like the shoe is about to drop when things finally calm—
who’s afraid that if you slow down, you won’t get back up—
Rider might be you, too.
🪶 Crow says:
Rest isn’t the end of motion.
It’s proof the machine can idle without dying.
LYRICS —
[INTRO ]
Rider enters the eulogy
I am Chariot reversed—
made of vigilance,
body can’t stop sprinting.
Didn’t notice I was running
until the quiet tripped my feet.
Rider is me.
[VERSE 1]
Call it “focus” when I can’t feel fun.
Ghost says: “Speed is our function.”
Crow says: “Speed is how you avoid life.”
Pain is the horse saying decide.
Fear’s a saddle saying don’t slow down.
When I rest, my back goes out—
[long pause]
Burnout.
Triggerless trigger wired.
Rider reflex fired—
quads grip like fearlings.
Wear my shoulders like earrings.
Life’s finally thriving—
so why am I still driving?
[PRE-CHORUS]
Ghost says: “You’re mine in the dark.”
I think I’m falling apart—
Crow says: you’re falling inward.
Collapse is part of the work.
[CHORUS]
Chariot chips old chains off bone,
fuels charge of choices I own.
Rider remembers the real road home—
Crow sees which ghosts follow.
Chariot reversed, Rider goes.
When I slow down, the false self goes.
[PRE-CHORUS]
Ghost says: “You’re mine in the dark.”
I think I’m falling apart—
Crow says: you’re falling inward.
Collapse is part of the work.
[CHORUS]
Chariot chips old chains off bone,
fuels charge of choices I own.
Rider remembers the real road home—
Crow sees which ghosts follow.
Chariot reversed, Rider goes.
When I slow down, the false self goes.
[BRIDGE — unhinged meltdown]
Silence teaches me:
I was the one I kept fleeing.
Motion’s nothing without where.
Desire is the driver.
Crow flicks a feather:
“Ride when you choose,
not when old fear alerts you.”
[CHORUS]
Chariot chips old chains off bone,
fuels charge of choices I own.
Rider remembers the real road home—
Crow sees which ghosts follow.
Chariot reversed, Rider goes.
When I slow down, the false self goes.
[OUTRO]
Crow stirs the ash:
“Eulogies aren’t endings.
They’re openings.”
Rider rests her legs.
Ghost retreats—
[long pause]
softer than I expect.
The gate is sealed.
Exhale the rest.
🪶 CROW BLESSING — FOR THOSE WHO STAYED
If you made it to the end,
may the part of you that learned to sprint be thanked.
May your body remember it doesn’t have to earn rest
by breaking first.
May the motion that once saved you loosen its grip
without being shamed for doing its job.
May your shoulders learn the shape of ease
one small pause at a time.
May Crow keep watch when you slow,
so you don’t mistake stillness for danger
or quiet for collapse.
And may you discover—gently, unmistakably—
that choosing when to move
is not giving up.
It’s coming home.
🪶
