The Wheel of Fate — treated across the depth-psychology and Tarot corpus under its cognate formulations as Fortune’s Wheel, the Wheel of Life, the Wheel of Karma, and the cosmic wheel of rebirth — occupies a nodal position in psychological and symbolic thought precisely because it stages the central tension between determinism and agency. From Onians’s classical philological recovery of the wheel as a form of bound fate in Greek and Orphic religion, to von Franz’s synthetic reading of the wheel as a symbol of the Self’s self-moving power across Indian, Babylonian, and medieval Christian registers, the term gathers together questions of cyclical time, psychological compulsion, and the possibility of liberation. Nichols, working squarely in Jungian idiom, reads the Tarot’s Wheel of Fortune as the hinge of the archetypal journey: the threshold between ego-conquest of the outer world and the inward turn of the second half of life. Pollack situates the Wheel within comparative mythology — Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhist — emphasizing karma as fate’s psychological substrate. Place anchors it in the iconographic genealogy of Fortuna, Tyche, and Nemesis. Jodorowsky stresses the Wheel as the formal marker of decimal closure in the Arcana, a pause awaiting Providence. What runs through all these voices is the irreducible question: does the Wheel imprison, or does awareness of its turning constitute the beginning of freedom?
the wheel symbolizes the self-moving power of the unconscious; that is, the Self. To move in rhythm with the movement of the psyche, the wheel, is the goal of the Indian.
Von Franz identifies the wheel as a symbol of the Self’s autonomous psychic power, arguing that alignment with its movement constitutes the spiritual goal, while misunderstanding its intentions transforms it into a torturing fate.
, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970thesis
The idea of a man’s fate as a circle within which he is bound will help to explain the ‘wheel’ of Ixion and the sympathetic magic by which a bird was bound in a ‘circle’ (wheel) and the ‘circle’ then turned.
Onians grounds the Wheel of Fate in classical philology, showing that the wheel is an archaic figure for compulsory, circular bondage — a form of fate that moves by necessity and is linked to erotic and mortuary magic.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
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 reads the Tarot’s Wheel of Fortune as the pivotal symbolic statement of the fate-versus-free-will problem, analyzing its figures as archetypal forces of integration and disintegration locked in cyclical compulsion.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
the ever-turning Wheel of Life came to signify the laws of karma, leading you to reincarnate in one body after another. Now, karma is in a way simply another explanation for the mystery of fate.
Pollack equates the Wheel of Life with karmic law, presenting karma as a cross-cultural psychological explanation for the mystery of fate and its inexorable determination of successive existences.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis
Nemesis’ symbols were a gryphon, a lash, scales, and a wheel. Another goddess associated with fortune was Necessity, who was also connected with the globe and the wheel of the cosmos.
Place traces the iconographic lineage of Fortune’s Wheel to Greek goddesses Tyche, Nemesis, and Necessity, demonstrating that the Wheel carries a composite divine authority over chance, punishment, and cosmic compulsion.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
In psychological terms: the ego is born, develops strength, begins to free itself from dependence on its parental archetypes, and establishes itself in the world. Now, after the Wheel’s turning, the remaining Trumps will picture the ensuing stages: evolution and regeneration.
Nichols positions the Wheel’s turning as the structural axis of the Tarot journey, marking the transition from ego-development and worldly conquest to inward spiritual evolution in the second half of life.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
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 interprets the Wheel structurally as the formal closure of the first decimal cycle, emphasizing its meaning as cyclical cessation and anticipation of renewal rather than as punishment or pure chance.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
the mill becomes a symbol of the negative wheel of life, the Indian samsara, the aimless cycle. But this aimless cycle is a form of the Great Round, whose positive form, in India as elsewhere, is the great containing World Mother.
Neumann situates the negative Wheel of Fate within the broader archetype of the Great Round, arguing that the destructive, aimless wheel of samsara is the shadow aspect of the World Mother’s encompassing, life-sustaining rotation.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
the intellect is to no avail in confronting the sphinx on the Wheel. We cannot free our creative energies with mental gymnastics nor outwit our human fate by clever answers.
Nichols argues, via the Oedipus parallel, that rational cleverness cannot liberate consciousness from the Wheel’s compulsion, pointing toward symbolic understanding as the only viable response to fate.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
We cannot escape our fate by running away from it. But we can perhaps modify it by becoming aware of attitudes that might attract such a fate, and by changing our viewpoint.
Nichols, through the Oedipus story, proposes that fate is not absolutely escapable but may be modified through psychological self-awareness and inward transformation rather than external flight.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
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 three monkeys as icons of human folly corresponding to the three Fates — past, present, and future — underscoring the Wheel’s iconographic equation of fate with the absurdity of unreflective human behavior.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
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 reads the Wheel as an invitation to philosophical acceptance of cyclical alternation, linking it to karma, astrology, and existential transformation rather than mere fortune-telling.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
Few tarot cards are interpreted as superficially or wrongly as the Wheel of Fortune. Even Waite complained that since the days of Eliphas Levi, the occult explanations of this card have been inadequate.
Banzhaf, citing Waite’s dissatisfaction with occult tradition, argues that the Wheel of Fortune has been chronically misread and that its deeper meaning concerns the hero’s confrontation with destiny and vocation rather than random chance.
, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting
Böhme says: ‘We may then liken it to a round spherical Wheel, which goes on all sides, as the Wheel in Ezekiel shows’
Jung’s citation of Böhme locates the wheel as a theosophical symbol of the totality of spirit and nature, linking it to Ezekiel’s visionary wheel and the Self’s omnidirectional self-movement.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
The Wheel of Fortune dramatizes the cyclic interaction of all opposites, to be followed by Strength, in which a lady and her lion intermingle their two kinds of energy in harmonious symbiosis.
Nichols reads the Wheel structurally within the Major Arcana’s second row as the dramatic enactment of the coniunctio oppositorum — the cyclical interplay of all polarities that the subsequent cards seek to integrate.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
Mayananda uses the center and the circumference of the Tarot Wheel to illustrate some differences between the Eastern and Western philosophies. The Eastern culture, he says, is near the Wheel’s center; it is a world of archetypal principles slow to change.
Nichols employs the Wheel’s geometry — center versus circumference — as a spatial metaphor for the contrast between Eastern introversion and Western extraversion, extending the Wheel’s symbolic range into cross-cultural typology.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980aside
The Wheel of Fortune and Judgment are the two cards that close their respective decimal series. Of the tenth stage, both point toward the end of a cycle.
Jodorowsky briefly positions the Wheel alongside Judgment as one of two structural endpoints of their respective decimal series, reinforcing its function as a marker of cyclical completion rather than as an independent thematic statement.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004aside