The Wheel of Fortune

What you are looking at

A great wheel lettered TARO turns in the sky. A sphinx sits above it, a serpent slides down one side, and four winged creatures read books at the corners.

What it is

The turn of circumstance; what you do not control but must meet.

Fate, cycles, the turning of fortune, destiny in motion

Where it stands

Where the tradition places it. These are ascriptions, not properties of the picture.

Element

Fire

Planet

Jupiter

Timing

Jupiter-hour; Sagittarius and Pisces seasons

Hebrew

Kaph (כ)

Path

Chesed–Netzach

Stone

Amethyst, lapis lazuli

Incense

Saffron, cedar, nutmeg

Colour

Violet (King), blue (Queen)

Egyptian

Nuit arching over the wheel

Through the seven arenas

The same seven arenas your horoscope reads each morning, so the card and the sky speak one vocabulary.

• Love & Relationships

  Here it wants to be met at full strength, and cools when it is managed.

• Work & Career

  Here it does its best work under a deadline it half resents.

• Money & Fortune

  Here it earns in bursts and forgets to bank the quiet months.

• Health & Energy

  Here it runs hot and needs discharging, not resting.

• Home & Family

  Here it makes a household loud and warm, and cannot be kept tidy.

Reversed

Reversed is not the opposite. It is the same force turned inward, blocked, overdone, or late.

Resistance to change, bad luck through lack of adaptation

• Love & Relationships

  Here it moves first and asks afterwards — turned inward, where it works on you instead of through you.

• Work & Career

  Here it starts things, and is bored by the middle of them — not yet arrived, or arriving late.

• Money & Fortune

  Here it spends on the thing that is alive rather than the thing that is wise — turned inward, where it works on you instead of through you.

• Health & Energy

  Here it breaks down from carrying on, never from stopping — overdone, past the point where it served you.

• Home & Family

  Here it needs one room it is allowed to disturb — turned inward, where it works on you instead of through you.

What it asks of you

What cycle in your life is reaching its apex or nadir?

Hebrew Kaph: 'palm of the hand' — the hand that grasps and must also release. The four creatures at the wheel's corners are the four fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) and the four evangelists: the cardinal fixed points around which change happens. Jupiter rules: fate is larger than the individual, and that is good news.

What it weaves with

How it stands beside another card, worked out from what the two share rather than looked up in a table.

• The Hermit the card before it

  Side by side in the arcana. The twenty-two are an order, and what one card leaves unfinished the next one picks up.

• Justice the card after it

  One follows the other. Whatever the first has not resolved is the second's opening condition.

• Six of Wands the same planet

  The same planet twice. Whatever it rules is the whole subject of this spread.

• Nine of Cups the same planet

  Twice under the same planet, which narrows the reading to what that planet governs and nothing else.

• Four of Swords the same planet

  One ruler standing behind both cards. Read them as two sentences about a single matter.

• Eight of Swords the same planet

  The same planet twice. Whatever it rules is the whole subject of this spread.