Major Arcana · 10
Wheel of Fortune
La Roue de Fortune · Ruota della Fortuna
The Wheel of Fortune tarot card meaning runs through both orientations: upright, change, cycles, fate; reversed, resistance to change, bad luck, stuck cycles. Below, its imagery across the Rider–Waite–Smith, Thoth, and Marseille decks, and what the tradition’s writers said about it.
- Element
- Fire
- Planet
- Jupiter
- Hebrew
- Kaph
- Numerology
- 10
- Timing
- Within the year; Jupiter-related cycles (12 years); turning points at solstices and equinoxes.
Upright
- change
- cycles
- fate
- turning point
- destiny
- synchronicity
Reversed
- resistance to change
- bad luck
- stuck cycles
- external forces
- delays
Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card Meaning
Upright
[object Object]
Reversed
[object Object]
The image, three ways
Rider–Waite–Smith
A great wheel turns in the sky, surrounded by four winged creatures (the fixed signs / evangelists) and inscribed with the letters TARO/TORA/YHVH. A sphinx sits atop the wheel; Anubis rises on one side, a serpent (Typhon) descends on the other.
Thoth
A complex mandala-wheel of Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt — alchemical principles in motion. Crowley's wheel is more clearly a cosmological mechanism than a casino-style fortune.
Marseille
La Roue de Fortune — a wheel cranked by a hand-pulley, with monkey-like figures rising on one side, falling on the other, and a sphinx-king on top. The rising and falling animals depict fortune's caprice.
Four ways a reversal speaks
After Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals (2002)
01 · delayed
Luck postponed; the upward turn deferred; the cycle stuck mid-quarter.
02 · karmic
A pattern repeating across cycles; the wheel turning through the same lesson again.
03 · opposite
The downturn rather than the rise; fortune withdrawing its favor.
04 · blocked
Resistance to change; gripping the spoke instead of riding the wheel.
What the tradition says
A.E. Waite · 1910
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity. Fortune as both gift and warning.
Aleister Crowley · 1944
The Book of Thoth
The Wheel as the cosmic principle of change — the alchemical Mercury, Sulphur, Salt in their endless transformations. Jupiter as the great expander and ruler of cycles.
Rachel Pollack · 1980
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
The Wheel marks the midpoint of the Major Arcana — the moment of cosmic perspective from which the Fool's journey can be re-seen.
Mary K. Greer · 1984
Tarot for Your Self
Greer reads the Wheel as the invitation to recognize the cycle the querent is currently inside — and to ask which quarter-turn they are at, because what is wisdom on the way up is folly on the way down. The Wheel asks for accurate self-location, not for resignation.
Robert M. Place · 2005
The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination
Place sources the Wheel directly to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and the medieval rota fortunae — the wheel was originally a moral image about not trusting worldly fortune. The four corner creatures came later, fusing the classical with the Christian, then with the zodiacal.
Shadow
The gambler convinced fortune favors only him; the fatalist who refuses agency because 'it's all the wheel'; the one who curses change as betrayal.
Archetypal role
Dame Fortune / Karma / The Cosmic Mechanism / Lady Luck
Historical notes
The Wheel of Fortune image is medieval, derived from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and Roman Fortuna iconography. The four corner creatures (man, lion, ox, eagle) are simultaneously the fixed signs of the zodiac and the four evangelists — the card encodes the union of pagan and Christian cosmology that defined Renaissance Hermeticism.
Neighbouring arcana
Wheel of Fortune combinations
Bring this card into a question
Begin a reading