Wheel of Fortune

The Plate

Start at the top of the rim and read clockwise: T, A, R, O. Start one letter later and the same four spell ROTA, Latin for wheel — the deck naming itself on its own device. Between the Roman letters stand four Hebrew ones spelling the divine Name; on an inner ring sit the alchemical marks of mercury, sulphur, water, and salt. A sphinx with a sword rests on top of the wheel, a serpent descends its left side, and the jackal-headed Hermanubis rises on the right. In the four corners of the plate, seated on clouds, are a winged man, an eagle, a bull, and a lion — and every one of them is reading an open book. Waite (1911) calls the design the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe and the flux of human life within it.

The Reading

Rise and fall are not verdicts here; they are addresses on one rim. The serpent going down and the jackal coming up occupy the same wheel in the same instant, which is the card's whole doctrine of fortune: circumstance turns as rhythm, not as reward, and position on the turning matters more than grip. Ride lightly. What the corners add is the part I trust most — the four creatures never ride. They study, and the readers keep still while the wheel does all the moving.

Reversed, the card shows a passenger fighting the season instead of working it, or taking one turn of the wheel for a personal judgment. The rim carries no names, only letters; the wheel was never about you.

In the School

In the tarot course the card turns at the center of Degree IV, after the Hermit's lantern and before Justice's sword: rhythm as law — Foundations of Hermeticism states it in full — the turning no rider stops. Its planet is Jupiter, the great mover of seasons; its element, Fire; the school's tables give it no single sign, for the whole zodiac is the rim.