Fortune occupies a distinctive and multi-layered position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as archetype, cosmological principle, and psychological challenge. The term’s most concentrated treatment appears in Tarot scholarship, where the Wheel of Fortune card serves as the central image: a revolving mechanism of ascent and descent that encodes the eternal alternation of prosperity and ruin, life and death, consciousness and the unconscious. Jodorowsky reads the Wheel as a liminal marker between decimal cycles of the Major Arcana — a point of closure and expectant pause — while Nichols frames it as the depth-psychological confrontation between fate and free will, where intellect proves insufficient and the unconscious must be allowed to speak. Place supplies the mythological genealogy of Fortuna through Tyche, Nemesis, and Necessity, tracing how their distinct attributes were fused into the Roman goddess whose wheel became the card’s dominant symbol. Pollack interprets the Wheel’s figures through Egyptian mythological lenses, finding a Jungian narrative of ego-death and psychic rebirth. Greene identifies Fortune with the Moon’s cyclical nature, linking Fortuna to Orff’s Carmina Burana and the instinctual, time-bound dimension of experience. Auerbach, from a literary-critical vantage, observes that antique literature treats Fortune’s instability as an extraordinary intrusion rather than the fabric of ordinary life — a tension that depth psychology systematically reverses, placing Fortune’s fluctuations at the very core of psychological becoming.
The Wheel of Fortune invites reflection upon inevitable alternations of ascents and falls, of prosperity and austerity, of joy and sorrow. It orients us toward change, whether positive or negative, and acceptance of the constant transformation of reality.
Jodorowsky argues that Fortune, embodied in the Wheel, is fundamentally a teacher of cyclical impermanence and the necessity of accepting ceaseless transformation.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis
In ancient Greece, there were several goddesses associated with fortune and fate. Chief among them were Tyche, the goddess of good fortune and the chance aspect of fate, and Nemesis, the goddess of divine punishment… All of these goddesses were combined to form the Roman Fortuna.
Place traces the iconographic and theological genealogy of Fortune from Greek goddesses through Roman synthesis, establishing the mythological depth behind the Tarot’s Wheel of Fortune image.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
culminating in the central question of fate versus free will, as presented by The Wheel of Fortune. In this card we see two odd-looking animals revolving helplessly on Fortune’s ever turning Wheel.
Nichols identifies the Wheel of Fortune as the Tarot’s primary site for the Jungian confrontation between fate and free will, framing its revolving figures as emblems of human entrapment in predestined cycles.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
The Moon was associated in medieval times with the goddess Fortuna, whom some of you will recognise in the card of the Wheel of Fortune in the Tarot deck. You may also know the opening verses of Orff’s Carmina Burana: O Fortune, changeable as the Moon!
Greene links Fortune to the Moon archetype and the cyclical instinctual dimension of psychic life, using the medieval identification of Fortuna with lunar variability to ground Fortune within depth-psychological time consciousness.
, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992thesis
The Wheel of Fortune, number 10, terminates the first decimal cycle of the Major Arcana. Its circular shape and the handle attached to it indicate its primary meaning: the end of one cycle and the pause to wait for the strength that will set the following cycle in motion.
Jodorowsky positions Fortune structurally within the Tarot’s symbolic architecture as a liminal threshold between completed and emerging cycles of individuation.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis
the instability of fortune occupies an important place in antique literature and that antique philosophical ethics often takes the same concept as a starting point. But strangely enough, elsewhere it but rarely conveys the impression of a living historical reality.
Auerbach argues that antique literary tradition treats Fortune’s instability as an exceptional, externally imposed fate rather than as the pervasive texture of lived historical experience.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953thesis
The snake follows the Wheel down; the jackal-headed man going up is Anubis, guide to the dead souls, and therefore giver of new life… Psychologically, only the death of the outer self can release the life energy within.
Pollack interprets the Wheel of Fortune’s figures through Egyptian mythology, reading Fortune’s cycle as a psychological process in which ego-death is the necessary condition for inner renewal.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
In the Tarot of Marseilles, the wheel supports three foolish creatures that are chasing each other’s tails around the rim of a six-spoked wheel. They are three monkeys, symbols of human folly.
Place reads the Marseilles Wheel’s transformation of human figures into monkeys as an iconographic commentary on the folly of identifying with Fortune’s turning — the figures represent the three Fates and the temporal cycle of past, present, and future.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
We cannot free our creative energies with mental gymnastics nor outwit our human fate by clever answers. As von Franz reminds us, it is a familiar plot of the unconscious to distract the hero by proposing philosophical questions at the very moment
Nichols, drawing on von Franz, argues that Fortune’s wheel defeats intellectual strategies of evasion, forcing the psyche toward a direct confrontation with fate rather than philosophical deflection.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
If you are a 19-10-1, you have no Hidden Factor Card; instead, you have the Wheel of Fortune (10) as your Teacher Card. In this pattern, you consciously trust that life brings you the experiences you need to achieve your purpose.
Greer applies Fortune as a personal psychological teacher-archetype within numerological Tarot work, framing the Wheel of Fortune as an invitation to conscious trust in life’s unfolding rather than passive drift.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
We may, therefore, hope to find some evidence connecting the Triumpho di Fortuna’s wheels, each with twenty-one divisions, with the twenty-one trumps, but there are no illustrations on the divisions of Fanti’s wheels to tie them with the trumps.
Place investigates, and ultimately cannot confirm, a structural connection between Fanti’s astrological Fortune-wheels and the twenty-one Tarot trumps, situating the Fortune motif within the Renaissance divinatory tradition.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005aside