Wheel of Fortune

Upright

turning · cycle · a change of weather

The season is moving whether you bless it or not. Something is coming around — opportunity, consequence, a luck that has been working underground. Your job is not to freeze the wheel but to notice where you are on it and step accordingly. Turn with it and the ride gets kinder.

Reversed

resistance · a stuck season · timing you will not accept

You may be gripping a spoke that has already passed, or calling a necessary turn bad luck. Loosen. Cycles include the bottom; they also include the climb. If the timing feels unkind, ask what it is teaching the hands, not just the mood.

On the card

• The wheel

  ROTA / TARO: a law that turns. Study it; do not freeze it.

• Sphinx

  The riddle at the top. Stillness is a position on the wheel, not off it.

• Serpent and Anubis

  Descent and rise. Both are part of the same machine.

• Four creatures

  Fixed signs, open books. Change can be read, not only suffered.

When it shows up

This looks like a season changing at work, a luck that arrives after a long quiet, or a consequence coming back around.

History

Smith’s wheel is lettered TARO / ROTA, with the tetragrammaton and alchemical glyphs on its face. A sphinx with a sword sits above; a serpent descends; Anubis rises; in the corners the four living creatures of Ezekiel — man, eagle, lion, bull — read from open books. Waite’s fortune is not dice: it is the turning of a law you can study.

If you want to sit with it

Where are you on the wheel this month — and what would turning with it look like?

Optional. Nothing is saved.