We have all felt it: the sudden turn of luck, the door that closes, the opportunity that appears from nowhere. In a 15th-century Italian card, a blindfolded woman turns a crank. Above her, a sphinx with a sword. Below, three figures rise and fall. They do not struggle. They simply ride the wheel. That image is the Wheel of Fortune, the tenth Major Arcana card in tarot, and it has been a spiritual tool for over five centuries. It represents the cyclical nature of fate, change, and the divine order that governs spiritual growth. Every turn of fortune carries meaning, not just chance.
A Brief History of Fortune’s Wheel
The image of a turning wheel predates the tarot by a thousand years. The Roman goddess Fortuna turned her Rota Fortunae (wheel of fortune) to raise and topple emperors. In the 6th century, the Roman philosopher Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution. In it, Lady Philosophy describes Fortune as a wheel that spins without pity: “I know all the tricks of that monster Fortune, especially her fawning friendship with those she intends to cheat.”
That text became standard reading in medieval schools. By the 14th century, wheel of fortune imagery appeared in cathedral rose windows, manuscript margins, and mystery plays. When tarot emerged in the 1450s in the courts of northern Italy, the wheel was already a familiar spiritual metaphor. The earliest surviving decks, the Visconti-Sforza (c. 1450), show a large wooden wheel with a crowned figure at the top and a Latin banner reading REGNO (I reign), REGN(AVI) (I have reigned), SUM SINE REGNO (I am without a kingdom), and RE(G)N(ABO) (I shall reign). It is a memento mori in card form.
The deck that most modern practitioners know, the Rider-Waite-Smith (1910), reshaped the image significantly. Artist Pamela Colman Smith, guided by Arthur Edward Waite, replaced the medieval kings with a sphinx, a snake, and a jackal-headed figure (Hermanubis). Waite wanted something “less obvious,” something that carried Hermetic and Egyptian symbolism. The result is the card we recognize today: a blue sky, a spinning wheel with Hebrew letters for the Tetragrammaton, and four creatures in the corners reading a book. It is a wheel that does not just turn. It turns toward spiritual understanding.
What the Wheel Actually Means
The spiritual meaning of the Wheel of Fortune rests on a single claim: change is not random. It follows a pattern. The card appears when a cycle is ending and another is beginning, and it asks us to see the pattern rather than fight the turn.
The symbols on the Rider-Waite-Smith card tell the story. At the top sits the sphinx, calm and still, carrying a sword. She represents balance and the law of cause and effect. To the right, the snake descends. To the left, Hermanubis rises. The snake is the descent into matter, ignorance, or decay. Hermanubis, the syncretic god of the Greeks and Egyptians, is the ascent into knowledge. The wheel turns both directions, and neither is permanent.
The four creatures in the corners, borrowed from the vision of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation (the man, the lion, the ox, the eagle), watch the wheel. They are fixed. Their presence says: while the wheel turns, the divine order stays. The spiritual practice of reading the Wheel of Fortune is to find that fixed point within the motion.
How Practitioners Use the Wheel in Divination and Ritual
The Wheel of Fortune appears in a reading and the first question we ask is: What is turning? Not whether the turn is good or bad, but what is being released and what is being received. The card is a confirmation that the change is meaningful and that it belongs to a larger cycle. In practice, we do not interpret it as “luck.” We trace the pattern.
In ritual, the Wheel of Fortune is a card for times of transition. We place it on the altar during the solstices and equinoxes, when the year itself turns. A common practice among tarot-based magical orders is to draw the Wheel at the New Year or during a Mercury retrograde shift. The card is laid on a cloth, and we sit before it, observing the four creatures. We trace the path of the snake, then the path of Hermanubis. Then we journal on what is falling away and what is rising.
Some practitioners use the card as a focal point for pathworking. They visualize themselves standing at the hub of a great wheel, the spokes radiating outward. The hub does not move. From the hub, one can see the entire rotation without being swept by it. That is the spiritual goal: to become the center, not the rim.
We never “force” the wheel to turn. The practice is receptive. We light a candle in a fireproof bowl, place the card before it, and watch the flame. We ask: What have I resisted turning? The answer is usually humbling.
Wheel of Fortune and Karma: Adjacent, Not Identical
The Wheel of Fortune is often compared to the concept of karma found in Dharmic traditions. The comparison is useful but imprecise. The wheel in Hinduism and Buddhism, the Bhavachakra, shows beings cycling through realms of existence driven by cause and effect. That wheel has a beginning and an end. It is something to escape.
The Western Wheel of Fortune, as interpreted in tarot, does not carry the same liberation narrative. It describes the nature of the material world and the soul’s experience within it. The cycle is not necessarily suffering to be transcended. It is a pattern to be understood. The sphinx with a sword suggests that understanding itself is the sword that cuts illusion, but the wheel keeps turning even for the wise.
In the Hermetic tradition, the wheel is linked to the principle of rhythm: “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything.” That is the Kybalion (1908), an anonymous text on Hermetic philosophy. The wheel is the pendulum, and spiritual practice is learning to neutralize its extremes by finding the center.
Common Misconceptions
The biggest mistake is to call the Wheel of Fortune the “luck card.” It has nothing to do with random chance. Fortune in the medieval and Renaissance sense meant divine order, fate, providence. The wheel is the mechanism of that order. When it appears, it is not telling you to buy a lottery ticket. It is telling you to watch the pattern.
A second misconception: the wheel is always good or always bad. No. The card is neutral. As Boethius wrote, what seems terrible at the bottom is the necessary condition for rising again. What seems wonderful at the top is not permanent. The spiritual practice is to hold the turn without attachment.
Third: the reversed position (the card upside down) does not mean “bad luck.” In many traditions, the reversed Wheel indicates resistance to change, clinging to a position on the wheel, or ignoring the cycle. It is the refusal to turn. The remedy is not to force the turn but to release the grip.
FAQ
Is the Wheel of Fortune a “good” card in a reading?
It is neither good nor bad. It indicates a change that is in alignment with a larger cycle. Your task is to find the meaning in the turn, not to judge it.
What does the Wheel of Fortune reversed mean?
Reversed, it often signals resistance to an inevitable change, bad timing, or a lesson that must be learned by letting go of control.
How does the Wheel of Fortune relate to karma?
It shares the idea of cause and effect but focuses on the cyclical nature of fortune rather than moral consequence. Karma implies debt; the wheel implies rhythm.
Can a practitioner influence the Wheel of Fortune?
Not directly. But understanding the cycle allows you to prepare for the turn. The card teaches timing, not manipulation.
Where to Go Next
The Wheel of Fortune belongs to the Major Arcana, the twenty-two cards that trace the soul’s journey from beginning to completion. Understanding the full arc requires seeing how the Wheel fits between Justice and Strength. For a broader view of tarot’s spiritual architecture, explore our complete Tarot guide. If the symbols on the Wheel itself (the sphinx, Hermanubis, the four creatures) left you curious, the glossary entry for Major Arcana defines each figure. And for a deeper look at how the cards describe spiritual growth, read our guide on Major Arcana symbolism in practice. The wheel does not stop. Neither does the work of understanding it.