Major arcana

Wheel of Fortune

Trump X of the twenty-two. Drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the deck first published in London in December 1909.

Waite on its symbolism

In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Éliphas Lévi, who has furnished several variants. It is legitimate—as I have intimated—to use Egyptian symbolism when this serves our purpose, provided that no theory of origin is implied therein. I have, however, presented Typhon in his serpent form. The symbolism is, of course, not exclusively Egyptian, as the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the angles of the card, and the wheel itself follows other indications of Lévi in respect of Ezekiel's vision, as illustrative of the particular Tarot Key. With the French occultist, and in the design itself, the symbolic picture stands for the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is the equilibrium therein. The transliteration of Taro as Rota is inscribed on the wheel, counterchanged with the letters of the Divine Name—to shew that Providence is implied through all. But this is the Divine intention within, and the similar intention without is exemplified by the four Living Creatures. Sometimes the sphinx is represented couchant on a pedestal above, which defrauds the symbolism by stultifying the essential idea of stability amidst movement.
Behind the general notion expressed in the symbol there lies the denial of chance and the fatality which is implied therein. It may be added that, from the days of Lévi onward, the occult explanations of this card are—even for occultism itself—of a singularly fatuous kind. It has been said to mean principle, fecundity, virile honour, ruling authority, etc. The findings of common fortune-telling are better than this on their own plane.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, Part II, § 2: his whole entry for the card, as printed.

What Waite says it means

These are the divinatory meanings printed in 1911, quoted as he wrote them. They are reported here as what one named book says, not as a claim that a card means anything or predicts anything.

Upright: Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity.
Reversed: Increase, abundance, superfluity.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, London, 1911, Part III, § 3. Out of copyright.

Where it sits in the trumps

The twenty-two trumps run from The Fool, numbered zero, to The World at twenty-one. Waite moved Strength to eight and Justice to eleven, swapping the order older decks use, so a Marseille deck numbers those two the other way round.

A birth date can be reduced to one of these twenty-two. How the birth card is worked out →