For You to See Life - 4u2c.life

The Wheel of Fortune ~ symbolic meanings painted in the card.

The card of the Wheel of Fortune portrays three women seated within a dark cave. The first is young, and spins thread from a golden spindle. The second is handsome and mature, and measures a length of the thread between her hands. The third is old, and holds a pair of shears. In the centre between them is a golden wheel, around which four small human figures can be seen in different positions. Through the mouth of the cave a rich green landscape is visible.

The cave suggests both the womb from which life springs and the tomb to which it returns - the beginning and end of fate. The three ages of the Moirai reflect the lunar phases - young crescent, frill, and finally dark, the three stages of every human life.

The thread which the Moirai spin, measure and cut is likened to the weaving of the tissues of the body which takes place in the womb, thus suggesting that fate is bound up with heredity and with the body itself.

Major Arcana ~ The Wheel of Fortune

Here we meet the three goddesses of Fate, whom the Greeks called the Moirai. In myth, the Moirai were the daughters of Mother Night, conceived without a father. Clotho was the spinner Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos, whose name means 'she who canot be avoided', the cutter. The three Fates wove the thread of a human life in the secret darkness of their cave and their work could not be altered and and the length of life and the time of death were part and parcel of the share which the Morirai alotted. If an individual tried to challenge fate as the heroes sometimes did, then they were afficteded with what was called hubris, which means arrogance in the face of the gods.

Such an individual could not of course evade his or her fate, and was sometimes punished tembly by the gods for trying to overstep the boundaries set by the Moirai. In one myth, it was said that Apollo the sun-god once laughed at the Moirai and mischievously made them dmnk in order to save his friend Admetus from death. But usually it was believed that Zeus himself walked in awe of the Fates, because they were not the children of any god, but rather the progeny of the depths of the Night, which was the oldest power in the universe.

On an inner level, the three Moirai who hold the Wheel of Fortune present an image of a deep and mysterious law at work within the individual, which is unknown and unseen yet which seems to precipitate sudden changes of fortune that overturn the established pattern of life. The four human figures on the Wheel represent different experiences of fortune, for when life intrudes in this way we do not at first look behind the Wheel to the source, but are preoccupied with our reactions to the change.

The man at the top has been catapulted into success through the turning of the Wheel, while the man at the bottom has been broken by what he believes to be ‘bad luck’ - not luck at all, but rather the visible signature of some mysterious pattern at work. The man on the right has begun his climb, helped by that same unseen power which has crowned one person and broken another; while the man on the left, against his will, has begun his descent, for the Wheel has turned and his ‘luck’ is running out.

But the card of the Wheel of Fortune is not really about sudden turns of luck, chance or accident. Behind the Wheel stand the Moirai, and there is an intelligent and orderly plan behind the apparently random changes in life. These ancient figures are within us, deep in the womb of the unconscious, although they are not part of the conscious personality. We only become aware of them through their outward effects, which feel like Fate, yet which spring not from some external power but from within the depths of the soul.

The experience of the Wheel of Fortune is really an experience of that ‘Other’ within us, which ordinarily we project onto the world outside, thus blaming sudden changes of fortune on someone or something besides ourselves. The turn of the Wheel of Fortune forces us to become aware of this Other, the intelligent movement behind the Wheel which is the destiny we each carry within us. The image of the Wheel itself is a profound one, for the moving nm of the Wheel is like the moving panorama of life which we encounter; but the hub remains still at the centre, a constant and unchanging essence or source. The hub is thus like the hidden Self which ‘chooses’ (although it is no choice of the conscious ego) to turn itself toward various situations, events, paths and people. Fate does not come to meet us; rather, we turn to meet our fate. In the card of the High Priestess, the Fool meets that intuitive faculty within himself, personified by Persephone, which can glimpse this pattern at work.

Here, in the card of the Wheel of Fortune, the Fool encounters that which weaves the design, the source of life itself, aloof and invisible, older than the oldest of gods, with an absolute power that even the king of the gods dares not challenge. Even the spirit is subject to the commands of this invisible centre which the Greeks imaged as the three Fates, and which shakes us from our complacency and our illusion of control.

The unease and even fear which some people have of studies such as the Tarot, astrology and other mantic arts perhaps spring in part from the anxiety which arises when the conscious personality, used to decision-making and the fantasy of omnipotent will, confronts this Other in the depths. Although it too belongs to us, it is not within our power to control, just as Zeus must walk in awe of the Moirai. Thus the Wheel of Fortune is more than a significator of change. It is a herald of a profound inner journey through which the Fool, the image of ourselves, gradually comes to terms with his own destiny.

On a divinatory level, the Wheel of Fortune augurs a sudden change of fortune. This may be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but whichever way the Wheel turns it brings growth and a new phase of life. We cannot predict what will come to meet us - or rather, what we will turn to meet. But behind these changes stand the Moirai, an image of the centre within. Thus the Fool is thrown from his complacency, and begins the descent to his own source.

I will explain in my readings what each card means, this is a general interpritation taken from the Mythic Tarot Deck

Information Source: Mythic Tarot Deck
[published in 1986 by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene and Illustrated by Tricia Newell (not the New Mythic Tarot)]