Wheel of Fortune

✦ Associations

Fire / Jupiter

✦ Keywords

The eternal cycle, external change, forces beyond your control, turning point, respond instead of react.

✦ Quote

Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best life as we may, from day to day. — Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

✦ Meaning

✦ Overview

The wheel of the year, the wheel of life, the Wheel of Fortune. Wheels are everywhere in our consciousness, perhaps because of their essential shape, one found in religions and spiritualities across time and location, one ever-present in nature itself: the circle.

✦ Circles in Nature

The sun is a circle, and so is the moon, and so are the moon's phases. The seasons turn in a repeating circle of winter, spring, summer, fall. The planets orbit in circles (or ellipses), and the Earth itself is a circle (or sphere) that revolves (in a circle) on its axis. On the micro level, atoms are circles, with their encircling bands of electrons, and energy flows in a circle, recycling itself. Circles are everywhere.

✦ Symbolism of the Circle

It's no surprise then that the circle has come to symbolize eternity, immortality, life/death, the soul, even God. In the Tarot, the circle represents an essential concept that lies under the entire metaphysical Tarot system, that of the endlessly repeating cycle of life-death-rebirth, of totality and of nothingness, and of the unity of all things. In the Fool, we were present in the circle as the number 0, the number of the void, of nothingness and of anythings, of absolute potential. In the Wheel of Fortune, we meet the circle in its function as the cycle, the ever-turning wheel that moves the heavens, the seasons, and our own fortunes as they intersect these powers beyond our control.

✦ Lack of Control

That's the most difficult thing about the Wheel of Fortune, I think: that we can't control it. The Wheel may bring misfortunes or snags in our plans, but it may just as easily bring unexpected boons and opportunities, and we have no power over either. For this reason, the card has over time become conflated with good luck or bad luck, but luck has little to do with it. Tarot teacher Lindsay Mack has a saying that she applies to many of the cards: "It's not good or bad; it just is." That is certainly true of the Wheel of Fortune.

✦ Fairness and Fate

When difficulties befall us, it's not necessarily because we have done something to deserve them. The same is true of happy opportunities and windfalls. Hard times fall on good people, and assholes slip through life greased with ease and privilege. It's not fair, but the Wheel is not about fairness. The Wheel is about one simple, and difficult, and universal cosmic truth: shit happens.

✦ Historical Rota Fortunae

The Wheel of Fortune in Tarot is based on a much older concept of the same name, which goes back to the Middle Ages and earlier, to ancient Rome. The medieval wheel of fortune—or Rota Fortunae in Latin—was often depicted as a giant, spoke wheel with a king on top, a beggar on the bottom, and two other people on the sides—one reaching upwards as the wheel rotates them from the bottom toward the top, and one clinging desperately as the wheel rotates them from the top downward. The wheel was turned by the Roman goddess Lady Fortuna, who wears a blindfold to show that she is unbiased or even random, and who is the precursor to our modern-day Lady Luck. The Rota Fortunae is an allegory that reminds us that there are forces beyond our control, that our fates are not completely in our own hands, and that even kings are brought low.

✦ Resistance and Acceptance

Like the people on the upwards and downwards sides of the medieval wheel of fortune, we often try to force the wheel to turn in our favor. We hungrily grasp at what may lift us upward, and we flail and kick when our fortunes are turning downward. When we're at the bottom, it's easy to lose faith or become mired in self-pity, and when we're at the top, it's easy to take our position for granted or assume a pompous invincibility. Fighting the wheel is an exercise in futility, like trying to stop the moon or make the Earth spin backwards. We can't force the wheel to turn, but turn it always does.

✦ Reading Implications

When the Wheel appears in a reading, it can herald something unexpected intersecting our lives, for better or worse. It signals contact with the greater, ever-turning macrocycle, the interconnected web of all life and energy and souls. It reminds us that we're a part of something much bigger than our understanding, and that that's exactly how it's supposed to be.

✦ Response and Serenity

Our power in the Wheel of Fortune is in how we choose to respond to our circumstances. Rather than reacting against our fortunes, can we work with them instead? Can we make peace with what's outside of our control, and focus on improving our lives through what is? The key is to work with the wheel, not against it. I'm not a religious person, but I think the popular "Serenity Prayer" adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery programs puts it best: "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Joseph Campbell has an observation about the medieval wheel of fortune: "if you are attached to the rim of the wheel of fortune, you will be either above going down or at the bottom coming up. But if you are at the hub you are in the same place all the time." Lindsay Mack has a similar teaching about the card, to seek the center of the wheel. So in our Wheel of Fortune moments (or days or weeks or years), when we find ourselves at the mercy of forces beyond our control and/or comprehension, the most important thing we can do is stay centered in the present moment, tend to what is within our power, and release the rest. That’s the way to serenity. That’s the hub. That’s the center of the circle.