Wheel of Fortune Tattoo Meaning
Cycles, fate, change, and the wheel of rise and fall no hand stops.
The Wheel of Fortune is the tarot's great card of fate, cycles, and change — card X, the ever-turning wheel that raises the low and brings down the high, the symbol of fortune's ceaseless turning that no hand can stop. It teaches that no position is permanent, and that wisdom lies in equanimity toward the wheel's rise and fall. To carry the Wheel of Fortune is to carry the turning of fate and the cycles of fortune — the wheel that lifts and lowers without ceasing, the impermanence of every high and every low, the change that is the one constant, and the equanimity that meets fortune's turning with steadiness.
The Wheel of Fortune — the Rota Fortunae — was one of the central images of medieval European thought, found in literature, philosophy, and art across the Middle Ages. The goddess Fortuna stood at her great wheel and turned it continuously, and bound to the rim were human figures rising and falling: one climbing toward the top, one enthroned in triumph at the summit, one tumbling headlong down the other side, and one crushed at the bottom — labeled, in the classic versions, 'I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, I am without reign.'
The lesson of Fortuna's wheel was the central medieval teaching on fortune: that worldly success, power, wealth, and status are utterly impermanent and beyond our control, raised up and cast down at the whim of fortune's turning. The mighty are brought low and the low raised high, and no one stays at the top; the only wisdom is to understand that every position on the wheel is temporary, and not to place one's trust in the gifts of fickle fortune. The Wheel was a memento of life's instability and the vanity of worldly pride. The medieval Wheel of Fortune is Fortuna's turning wheel — the goddess endlessly turning the Rota Fortunae, raising figures to the throne and casting them down ('I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, I am without reign'), the great medieval emblem of the impermanence of all worldly fortune.
The Rider-Waite Wheel of Fortune floats in the sky — it is not a wheel in the world but a cosmic wheel. Around its rim are the Hebrew letters TARO (or TORA or ROTA — it can be read in multiple ways). On its spokes are the alchemical symbols for mercury, sulfur, water, and salt. In the corners are four winged figures reading books — the four fixed signs of the zodiac (Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, Taurus), the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the four elements. The sphinx sits at the top of the wheel holding a sword. Anubis (the Egyptian god of the dead) ascends on one side; Typhon (the Egyptian god of evil and chaos) descends on the other. The wheel turns. No one is permanently at the top.
Wheel of Fortune across cultures
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