10 - The Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card
The Wheel of Fortune is tarot card number 10, although it is the 11th card of the Major Arcana because the 1st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).
The Wheel of Fortune is a welcome, positive card.
It is also known as the 'Wheel of Life' and the 'Wheel of Destiny'. The wheel of fortune in the tarot deck is not the type of wheel found in some casinos, in which one wins or loses on the turn of the wheel. Instead, it represents the changing of the seasons, of our stages or life, ideas, energies, and opportunities.
The Wheel of Fortune tarot card encompasses the notion that:
"What goes around, comes around."
The Wheel of Fortune continues to turn, giving us fresh opportunities to learn old lessons (not yet mastered), and also to enjoy new challenges. As old problems move away from us we are offered new possibilities for development, growth, and satisfaction.
Some words and expressions associated with The Wheel of Fortune tarot card include:
- Fortune
- Good luck
- Moving ahead
- Destiny
- Change (for better or worse)
- Abundance
- Prosperity
- Cycle of life
- Life experiences
- Going around in circles,
- Stuck in a cycle
- Repeating actions.
Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.
More about the Major Arcana
The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the
most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major
Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical
order (beginning with 0 - The
Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment
that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".
Some texts also include meanings for "reversed
cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both
order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that
it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in
the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation
of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple
mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.
Click here for more Major Arcana cards
