Wheel of Fortune

From the Latin 'rota' (wheel) and 'fortuna' (the goddess Fortune). The image descends directly from the Wheel of Fortune that filled medieval manuscripts, popularized by Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' (c.524), in which Fortune's wheel raises and lowers kings without warning.

The Visconti-Sforza deck already shows the wheel with figures clinging to it, captioned 'I shall reign', 'I reign', 'I have reigned', 'I am without reign'. Sometimes a blindfolded old man turns the wheel from below. The imagery is taken straight from manuscript illumination and needs no occult key.

Smith crowded the wheel with Golden Dawn symbolism. At the top sits a sphinx holding a sword; on the left a serpent (Typhon) descends; on the right Anubis rises. Around the rim alternate the letters of the divine name YHVH and the word TARO. In the clouds at the corners ride the four living creatures — man, eagle, lion, and ox — each clutching a book.

The sphinx represents the wisdom that holds the pivot of the wheel; the descending serpent and ascending Anubis embody the fall and rise of fortune. The four living creatures are the fixed signs of the zodiac (Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, Taurus) and the four evangelists. The wheel itself is impermanence — the only certainty is that things will turn.

The Marseille wheel is plain, with four figures rising and falling. Waite, through the Golden Dawn system, loaded it with astrological and Kabbalistic correspondences. In the Thoth deck Crowley renders the wheel as a ten-spoked radiance and attributes it to Jupiter, incorporating Thelemic figures such as Hrumachis.

The card draws on the Roman goddess Fortuna, Boethius's wheel, and the Buddhist 'bhavacakra' (wheel of becoming). Astrologically it corresponds to Jupiter, the planet of fortune and expansion. As trump number 10 it marks the midpoint of the Major Arcana — the moment the journeyer recognizes the cycles of fate that govern the world.