Tarot Cards Meanings - Major Arcana - Wheel of Fortune - meaning in detail
Wheel of Fortune (La Roue de Fortune) - tarot card meaning in detail
The Lord of the Forces of Life
Card Number: 10
Key Number: 21
Rulership: Jupiter
Hebrew Letter: Kaph
Translation: Hand
Numerical Value: 9
Astrological Associations: Uranus
Full Meaning
The Wheel of Fortune is a card of fantastic, great positive change and all for the better. In many respects this card is one that suggests that you have got a good chance that you will get the finances you require or the job you wanted or you will succeed at what you set out to do.
Obviously nothing Is ever guaranteed, but with the Wheel of Fortune in your spread you certainly have a positive omen on your side. This is a card of good luck, fortune and change and this is change for the better. However in order to fully succeed you must also be prepared to adapt to this change and be open to it and work with it. This is a card of good luck.
Traditional Symbolism
In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Éliphas Lévi, who has furnished several variants. It is legitimate--as I have intimated--to use Egyptian symbolism when this serves our purpose, provided that no theory of origin is implied therein. I have, however, presented Typhon in his serpent form. The symbolism is, of course, not exclusively Egyptian, as the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the angles of the card, and the wheel itself follows other indications of Lévi in respect of Ezekiel's vision, as illustrative of the particular Tarot Key. With the French occultist, and in the design itself, the symbolic picture stands for the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is the equilibrium therein. The transliteration of Taro as Rota is inscribed on the wheel, counterchanged with the letters of the Divine Name--to shew that Providence is imphed through all. But this is the Divine intention within, and the similar intention without is exemplified by the four Living Creatures. Sometimes the sphinx is represented couchant on a pedestal above, which defrauds the symbolism by stultifying the essential idea of stability amidst movement.
Behind the general notion expressed in the symbol there lies the denial of chance and the fatality which is implied therein. It may be added that, from the days of Lévi onward, the occult explanations of this card are--even for occultism itself--of a singularly fatuous kind. It has been said to mean principle, fecundity, virile honour, ruling authority, etc. The findings of common fortune-telling are better than this on their own plane.
Wheel of Fortune Card illustration.
The Major Arcana suit.
