Wheel of Fortune Tarot card meaning

In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Eliphas Levi, 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 Levi 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 Levi 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 divinatory meanings:

Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity.

I walked along, absorbed in deep thought, trying to understand the vision of the Angel. And suddenly, as I lifted my head, I saw midway in the sky a huge, revolving circle covered with Kabalistic letters and symbols. The circle turned with terrible velocity, and around it, falling down and flying up, symbolic figures of the serpent and the dog revolved; above it sat an immovable sphinx.

In clouds, on the four quarters of heaven, I saw the four apocalyptical beings, one with the face of a lion, another with the face of a bull, the third with a face of an eagle, and the fourth with the face of a bull. And each of them read an open book.

And I heard the voices of Zarathustra's beasts:

--"All go, all return,"--the wheel of life ever turns. All die, all flourish again,--the year of existence runs eternally.

"All perish, all live again, the same house of existence is ever building. All separate, all meet again, the ring of existence is ever true to itself.

"Existence begins at every moment. Round each "here" rolls "there". The middle is everywhere. The way of eternity is a curve".