For many years I've conceptualized it as the circuit of an individual lifetime, as opposed to the other great wheel among the trumps, XXI-the World, which is the cycle of all lifetimes.
The wheel of fortune (today we call it "luck") has two components: karma, and the chance occurrence of random events.
Karma is sort of like destiny, but not exactly. For each of us, accumulated karmic results are effects -- the results of choices we've previously made. And of course, the very nature and the specific array of those earlier choices were themselves partly determined by karmic effects which accumulated in our lives up to that time. Thus the specific circumstances of our lives are at least in part an expression of who we are.
It's the meshing of karma with random and chance occurrences that produces the pattern familiar to everyone over the age of ten, and expressed in the old American hymn: Sometimes I'm up; sometimes I'm down.
The card in the lllustration, from the very early Visconti-Sforza deck (Milan, about 1460) conforms to the standard medieval presentation. The substitution of beasts for humans in the Tarot de Marseilles was an unfortunate variation, leading to the degenerated echo of of the original image visible in the confused occultism of most modern decks.
The medieval Wheel of Fortune portrays the karmic component of the cycle, but doesn't account for the undeniable and often crucial element of chance. My own card emphasizes chance, but at the expense of the karmic component. It would require a gifted artist-philosopher indeed to produce an image which comprehensively embraces the elements of this simultaneously simple and very complex concept.
Photo and design of X-Wheel of Fortune ©2012 by Dave B, a.k.a. catboxer. Click on images for a larger view.
No comments:
Post a Comment