The Wheel of Fortune

Origin and iconography

In the Visconti-Sforza Tarocchi of c. 1450 the Wheel is shown with four human figures arranged around it, often labelled in Latin regnabo, I shall reign, regno, I reign, regnavi, I have reigned, and sum sine regno, I am without a kingdom, a direct illustration of Boethius' sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. Fortune herself sometimes turns the crank. The Tarot de Marseille of the 17th century shows three figures: an ape-like creature climbing up, a sphinx crowned at the top, and an ass-headed creature falling, with the Hebrew name of God spelled around the wheel's rim.

Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith Wheel is densely Hermetic. A wheel inscribed with the letters T-A-R-O (also readable as TORA, ROTA, ORAT) and the Hebrew tetragrammaton Y-H-V-H is set against a sky filled with clouds. At the four corners are the kerubic creatures of Ezekiel: the bull, lion, eagle and angel, each reading a book. A descending serpent (Typhon) on the left, an ascending Anubis on the right, and a blue sphinx with a sword crowning the wheel complete the composition. The Thoth deck of Crowley and Harris (1938-1943) reduces the symbols to a vortex of pure rotation.

Upright and reversed meaning

Upright, the Wheel signals a turn of fortune in the seeker's favour: opportunities that arrive without being engineered, sudden visibility, the lifting of a long-stuck situation, the answer to a long-held question. It also marks any moment when the seeker recognises a cycle they have lived through before and has the chance to play it differently. The card describes synchronicity, the alignment of inner readiness with outer occasion, and the broad pattern of seasons rather than the granular movement of single days.

Reversed, the Wheel can describe a downturn, a cycle that has stalled, or the experience of the wheel turning against the seeker. It may show the cost of having tried to hold the wheel still, of having grasped at favourable conditions and refused their natural passage. As a phase, the reversed card invites you to remember that the wheel is always turning, that fortune is restored not by force but by patience, and that the position at the bottom of the cycle is the position from which one rises. The trump returns upright with the next quarter turn.

In readings

When the Wheel appears in your spread, look at the cycle the question is part of. In love readings it favours reunions, surprising meetings, the return of an old connection in a new form, and the changes of season in a long partnership. With Judgement it suggests the closing of an old chapter; with The World it marks a complete cycle.

In professional readings the Wheel often signals offers that arrive unexpectedly, market shifts, promotions tied to luck as much as merit, and the broader cycles of an industry. In a Celtic Cross it frequently occupies positions of immediate future or external influence. Spiritually it teaches non-attachment to outcome, the cultivation of equanimity across the rises and falls of fortune. In a Rider-Waite reading the four kerubic creatures at the corners are stable: the wheel turns, but the witnesses do not. They model the attitude the card recommends.

Symbolic depth

In the Golden Dawn system the Wheel is assigned to the Hebrew letter Kaph, the open palm, and to the path connecting Chesed to Netzach on the Tree of Life. Its astrological attribution is Jupiter, the planet of expansion, fortune and benevolent cycles. The number 10 closes the first decade and returns to unity at a new octave; in Pythagorean numerology it is the Tetractys, the perfect figure, and on the Tree of Life it is Malkuth, the kingdom in which all higher influences come to rest.

Mythologically the Wheel draws on the Roman goddess Fortuna with her wheel and rudder, on the Buddhist bhavachakra or wheel of becoming, on Boethius' Lady Philosophy, and on the medieval Rota Fortunae. Carl Jung read the archetype as the Self in its rotational aspect, the mandala that organises psychic content through symmetry. In Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey the Wheel marks the Apotheosis or the moment of recognition that the protagonist is not separate from the larger pattern of the Major Arcana sequence.

Also known as

• La Roue de Fortune
• Rota Fortunae
• Key X
• Fortune
• The Wheel