The Wheel of Fortune upright
The Wheel of Fortune speaks of change, movement and alternation in your situation. Your situation is not stable: it evolves, with ups and downs. The change is often sudden, and what it will bring is hard to predict. You may not understand what caused it, and you are probably not responsible for it in the usual sense of the word. A relationship may end, for example, without anyone having made a mistake, simply because life goes on.
This card also speaks of luck. It points to opportunities, a chance meeting, being in the right place at the right time. Luck comes when your preparation meets the opportunity, and it is up to you to seize it. Success may also come to you from circumstances more than from your own merit. Resources, people, money or news may arrive or leave. You may receive recognition for what you have accomplished, have a fuller social life and see your horizons widen: promotion, travel, a change of place, broader knowledge. This luck remains unstable: your situation may be envied, but the benefits sometimes last only for a time. Luck can be good or bad, improve or get worse, but it always changes. It is the factor you can't calculate. It can also mean a happiness that has its limits, with the intoxication of success.
You may be dealing with cycles that come back: periods that rise and fall, as in business or on anniversaries. What rises can fall again, what is at the bottom can rise again, and nothing is secured forever. No state stays the same: even the heaviest and most motionless eventually starts moving again.
The card shows the cyclical nature of your life, in events as well as in your inner states, your periods of growth and decline. On the psychological level, it shows desires, fears, pride, ambition and unconscious reflexes that you don't yet control: you rise and fall with them. You think you choose, but you often react more than you act, and you get caught up in the same movements until you understand them. It is a card of lucidity: success and failure often obey a single law of movement. A victory may be only temporary, and a fall may be only a passage to another state. Every movement carries its own correction: what goes too far meets its limit, and what is thrown off balance calls for readjustment. You don't progress by your will, your caution or your own light alone: you are caught up in an order larger than you.
When you are in the movement, you see only the immediate events and the everyday worries that occupy your ego. By stepping back, you see the whole: it amounts to taking stock of where your life has gone and where it is going. What matters most in a change is your reaction. You can accept the new situation and adapt to it, take it as an opportunity and find meaning and value in it. Upright, the card indicates this adaptation, and at its strongest the ability to understand your life more deeply through what happens. The end of a relationship, despite the pain, can give you a better knowledge of yourself.
Understanding the meaning of what happens to you gives you a grip on things: if your understanding is weak, your control is uncertain, and if you grasp the succession of situations well, you live with more ease. This understanding comes from observing regularities, such as the return of the seasons, and noting what repeats. The card promises success in practical life to the woman who applies her intuition: you have to sense the alternations in order to benefit from them.
Your strengths
You adapt to changing circumstances. You can look for an overview of your situation and rise above it.
What holds you back
- You undergo changes without understanding their cause.
- You react to your desire, fear, pride or ambition more than you act, and you repeat the same patterns.
- You may give in to fickleness and take things as they come, without follow-through.
- You see only the immediate everyday and lose the thread of the whole.
What helps
Step back to see your situation as a whole and take stock of where you are. Ask yourself how you react to a change: accept it, adapt to it, look for meaning in it. Seize the opportunity when it opens, being prepared. Stop confusing the place you occupy with who you are. Wait for the right moment to act, when the hour has come, without being swept along by the crowd's movement.
The Wheel of Fortune reversed
The reversed Wheel of Fortune remains rather favorable, but it is less stable than the upright card. Hope and discouragement alternate in you. The change you are waiting for arrives with delays and repeated frustrations, and you sometimes have to start over or go back over what you have already done. You feel impatient for something new, but stuck, not knowing what comes next. A change that seems near has trouble getting started, and it then depends on how clear your choices are, on an extra effort or on a conscious commitment from you. The situation may not be ripe yet, and moving too soon would be premature. It can also be a bad time, as if you wanted to do something out of season. You may fear you let an opportunity slip by and doubt another will come. This card can also concern travel.
In the other direction, your social life or your transitions can become restless and relentless, to the point where you cannot stop. There can be too many changes at once, with rapid growth and scattered effects, too fast to plan anything. If you feel everything is going too fast and too easily, you can become too cautious, rigid or conservative in order to slow the movement. Some read failure and bad luck here, but the problem more often lies in your attitude: negativity creeps into the upright card's optimistic outlook.
Inwardly, movements and shifts in awareness are taking place without your seeing them, and they will show in events only later. When you project this card onto someone else, you see them as someone with all the luck, rising to the top. If you stay close to them, you risk seeing them fall. Instability and unpredictability increase. The words associated with this position are: abundance, excess, negligence, insecurity, instability, inconstancy, adventures and risks.
Another reading says the transformation will come with difficulty, but it will come all the same.
Your strengths
You can recognize that your actions act on the whole and reflect it.
What holds you back
- You swing from hope to discouragement.
- You feel anxious, ready for something new but stuck.
- You become too cautious, rigid or conservative when everything goes too fast.
- You fear you missed your chance.
- You get caught up in the restlessness and can no longer plan.
What helps
Courage, endurance and trust that the wheel will turn. Waiting until the situation is ripe rather than forcing it. Clarifying your choices, putting in the effort required and committing consciously if the change is what you want. Looking at your attitude, because that is where the blockage lies. Accepting that your moment may simply be offset.
What the card shows
The overall image
A great wheel fills the center of the card. Three figures are placed on it: one rises, one descends, and the third stays at the top. A crank sometimes sets the wheel in motion. Nothing here stays stable: the image shows a law of rotation, return and passage. What is at the top may come back down, what is at the bottom may rise again. This image comes from the medieval wheel of Fortune, which raised and then lowered people, whether kings, the powerful or the wretched. No position on it is final. It also served as a lesson against pride: however much power has been gathered, a person's fate does not depend on that person alone.
The three figures
The jackal guides the souls of the dead and gives new life, and the serpent stands for death in the story of the god Set. The two are linked: the end of one form leaves room for new life. The figure that rises stands for the forces that build and help a person grow. The one that descends stands for the forces of destruction that every living being must resist. The sphinx holds a sword. It represents balance and the passing stability of forms, and it has the power to cut and to decide between opposing forces. It stays above the wheel and stands for the mystery of life, which matters more than the apparently senseless sequence of events. It unites man and woman, human and animal. Its face is human, its wings are an eagle's, its claws a lion's and its flanks a bull's.
The four creatures in the corners
In the four corners are a man (or an angel), an eagle, a lion and a bull. They come from a vision of the prophet Ezekiel and appear again in the Book of Revelation. They correspond to the four fixed signs of the zodiac: the bull to Earth, the lion to Fire, the eagle to Water and the man to Air. These four elements are also those of the four suits of the tarot: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. The first Christians saw in them the four evangelists, which is why they hold books. Because they evoke the whole zodiac, they recall the great wheel of the visible universe.
What the card means
The card shows the cyclical nature of existence: events, inner states, periods of growth and decline. You remain subject to these alternations as long as you identify with the place you occupy at a given moment. As long as you are carried along by desire, fear, pride or ambition, you rise and fall with them: you think you are choosing, but you often react more than you act. This card is a test of lucidity, because success and failure follow one and the same law of movement. A peak may be temporary, and a fall may be a passage to another state. Every movement carries its own correction: what is exalted meets its limit, and what is lowered can be raised again. It also signals change, movement, expansion and an opportunity to seize. In a reading, it often points to a change whose cause you do not understand and for which you are not responsible.
Your strengths
When you understand what you are going through, you control your situations better. You can see your whole life when you step back. You are able to adapt, and to look for the meaning and value of a change.
What holds you back
- You react more than you act when desire, fear, pride or ambition lead you.
- You see only the immediate events and the daily worries when you are caught up in the movement.
- You fight a change that has already happened, while life goes on anyway.
What helps
- Recognize what, in you and around you, keeps you turning.
- Step back to see the whole: this lets you take stock of where your life has gone and where it is going.
- Ask yourself whether you accept the new situation and are adapting to it, then look for what it teaches you.
- Prepare so you can seize the opportunity when it comes.
