Medieval people drew Fortune's wheel with four figures clinging to its rim, each labeled in Latin: regnabo, "I shall reign," on the way up; regno, "I reign," at the top; regnavi, "I have reigned," on the way down; and sum sine regno, "I am without a kingdom," at the bottom. The image goes back to Boethius, a Roman statesman who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy around 524 while awaiting execution. In it Lady Philosophy tells him that Fortune's nature is to turn, and that complaining when she does is like complaining that the wind blows. The same wheel spins through the Carmina Burana, whose "O Fortuna" you've almost certainly heard in a film trailer. The tarot's Wheel of Fortune belongs to that long tradition, with one important addition.
That addition sits on top. Waite and Smith removed the clinging kings and put a calm sphinx at the crown of the wheel, holding a sword. The rim is lettered T-A-R-O between the four Hebrew letters of the divine name, a Golden Dawn puzzle: read from different starting points, TARO becomes ROTA ("wheel"), ORAT ("speaks"), TORA ("law") and ATOR (Hathor), roughly "the wheel of tarot speaks the law of Hathor." The card corresponds to Kaph, "palm of the hand," and to Jupiter, planet of expansion and large cycles, on the path from Chesed to Netzach. In the corners, the four living creatures from Ezekiel and Revelation (angel, eagle, bull, lion) sit reading, still learning.
The old medieval moral was resignation: kings fall, so don't get attached. The tarot's version is more hopeful. There's a position that doesn't rise and fall, the hub at the center, and the sphinx sits right above it. Paul Foster Case read the card as the law of cycles: events follow patterns, and seeing the pattern is where freedom inside it begins. You can't stop the wheel, but you can learn its rhythm.
Its shadow is fatalism, the belief that luck is everything and effort means nothing, along with its mirror, the illusion of total control that breaks the first time fortune turns. What cycle keeps repeating in your life? Where are you on it right now? What stays constant in you however the rim spins?
Bad seasons pass, and so do good ones, which is a reason to savor them. Medieval churches painted Fortune's wheel on their walls so the congregation would absorb its lesson without being preached at. The image still works that way. Glimpsed daily, it keeps nudging you back toward the sphinx's seat, near the center.
