The term 'Wheel' occupies a surprisingly central position in depth-psychological discourse, functioning simultaneously as cosmological diagram, archetypal image, and psychological map. Von Franz reads the wheel as the self-moving power of the unconscious — the Self itself — capable of appearing as either redemptive guide or tormenting compulsion depending on whether its 'intentions' are understood. Jung encounters the wheel in the alchemical tradition (the circulatory opus, the 'mystery of the whirlwind'), in dream symbolism (the eight-spoked mandala as protective centre), in Aion's equation of the horoscope-wheel with the anima mundi, and in the visionary experience of Brother Klaus, where the wheel's terrifying numinosity demanded the compensatory order of the mandala. Neumann extends the image into Great Mother phenomenology, reading the mill and the wheel of samsara as the negative face of the Great Round. Campbell traces the wheel of being across Celtic, Buddhist, and Hindu mythology, emphasising its karmic and cosmological dimensions. The Tarot commentators — Nichols, Pollack, Place, Jodorowsky, Banzhaf — treat the Wheel of Fortune as a pivotal image of fate, cyclical transformation, and the pivot between ego-development and individuation. The core tension across the corpus is whether the wheel enslaves (the wheel of rebirth, Fortune's roulette) or liberates (the Self's rhythmic movement, the mandala), a polarity that proves generative rather than resolvable.
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 establishes the wheel as the primary symbol of the Self, capable of appearing as redemptive guide or torturing fate depending on whether its intentions are understood.
, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970thesis
We know from experience that the protective circle, the mandala, is the traditional antidote for chaotic states of mind. It is therefore only too clear why Brother Klaus was fascinated by the symbol of the wheel.
Jung argues that the wheel functions psychologically as a mandala — a stabilising symbol of wholeness that compensates for the disintegrating terror of numinous visionary experience.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
As the anima mundi, the soul revolves with the world wheel, whose hub is the Pole. That is why the 'heart of Mercurius' is found there, for Mercurius is the anima mundi.
Jung identifies the wheel with the anima mundi and with Mercurius, making it the structural image of the cosmos-as-psyche and connecting it to the horoscope as a map of individual fate.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
The idea of the circulatory opus, or rotating arcane substance, finds expression as early as Komarios, who speaks of the 'mystery of the whirlwind in the manner of a wheel'.
Jung traces the wheel into alchemical tradition as the image of the circulatory opus, linking it to Ezekiel's vision and the concept of a self-rotating arcane substance at the heart of the transformative work.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
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 wheel within the Great Mother archetype, reading the negative wheel of samsara as one pole of the Great Round whose positive face is the sheltering World Mother.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955thesis
like the Buddhist 'wheel of being,' this also has six spokes. The felly is bound by the linked chain of the twelve causes of rebirth: ignorance, action, consciousness, name-and-form, the sense organs, contact, sensation, desire, intercourse, birth, life, and finally disease, old age, and death.
Campbell demonstrates the structural equivalence of the Celtic divine wheel and the Buddhist bhavacakra, showing the wheel as a cross-cultural diagram encoding the causes of conditioned existence.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968thesis
the Wheel of Life is held in the claws of the devil of impermanence, indicating that the wheel is put into motion by the unavoidable fact of impermanence.
Spiegelman reads the Buddhist Wheel of Life as a Jungian diagram: impermanence is its motor, and ego-centered attachment is precisely what keeps consciousness spinning within it.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
It is, first of all, an energy system whose essence is motion. Life presents itself here as a process – as a system of constant transformation equally involving integration and disintegration, generation and degeneration.
Nichols interprets the Tarot Wheel as a psychological energy diagram in which up and down are not opposed forces but a continuous spectrum of transformation, resisting any simple moral reading.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
after the Wheel's turning, the remaining Trumps will picture the ensuing stages: evolution and regeneration. In the classic formula this was stated as the disentanglement of spirit from matter and its ultimate ascent to a new and heavenly unity.
Nichols positions the Tarot Wheel as the structural pivot of the Major Arcana, marking the transition from ego-development and worldly conquest to the inward, spiritual second half of life's journey.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
The ever-turning Wheel of Life came to signify the laws of karma, leading you to reincarnate in one body after another. Again, our limited understanding prevents us from directly experiencing the truth behind the wheel.
Pollack links the Tarot Wheel to karma and the karmic logic of fate, arguing that its truth remains concealed from ordinary consciousness and requires a depth of understanding that transcends literal interpretation.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
we see two odd-looking animals revolving helplessly on Fortune's ever turning Wheel. The animals wear human dress. Is the Tarot trying to tell us that we, like these animals, are trapped in the endless predestined round of Fortune's Wheel?
Nichols opens the key interpretive question around the Wheel of Fortune: whether it represents inescapable compulsion or holds a more liberating archetypal message about fate and consciousness.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
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 reads the Wheel structurally as a marker of cyclical closure and potential, a pause between completed and nascent life phases rather than a simple image of capricious fortune.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
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 treats the Wheel as an invitation to accept constant transformation — the karmic, astrological, and existential cycles — rather than resist them through ego-identification with any fixed position.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
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 traces the iconographic devolution of the Wheel's figures from articulate human speakers to animalistic symbols of folly, reading the simplification as a deepening of the wheel's comment on unconscious compulsion.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
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 grounds the Wheel of Fortune in its classical antecedents — Tyche, Nemesis, and Necessity — establishing its iconographic range as encompassing both providential luck and the inexorable wheel of cosmic order.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
on a whirling platform, he saw a man with blood dripping down his body; for a wheel was whirling on his head. Then he made haste and said: 'Sir, why do you stand thus with a wheel whirling on your head?'
Campbell presents a Buddhist-Hindu parable in which a wheel of punishment transfers between bearers through the mechanism of desire, illustrating the wheel as an emblem of karmic inheritance and insatiable greed.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
In the drawing on the margin of the note this centre is portrayed as a wheel with eight spokes. Mercurius turning the eight-spoked wheel which symbolizes the process.
Jung reads the eight-spoked wheel in an analysand's dream as a mandala signifying the alchemical process, with Mercurius as its animating spirit and the centre as the focal point of psychic integration.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
The Eastern culture, he says, is near the Wheel's center; it is a world of archetypal principles slow to change. Western culture he locates near the Wheel's periphery where these archetypal ideas have been spun out into objective reality.
Nichols uses the geometry of the Wheel — centre versus circumference — to articulate the Jungian distinction between Eastern introversion toward archetypal essence and Western extraversion toward differentiated objective reality.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
The sphinx on top of the Wheel represents Horus, Osiris's son, and god of resurrection. Life has triumphed over death. But the sphinx, as we saw in the Chariot, also signifies the mystery of life.
Pollack reads the sphinx atop the Wheel as the mystery of life transcending the cycle of death and renewal, connecting it to the ego's need to relinquish control and allow the unconscious to speak.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
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 misread.
Banzhaf situates the Wheel of Fortune as consistently misread by esoteric tradition, arguing for a deeper interpretation tied to the hero's readiness to receive a genuine calling or task.
, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting
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 draws on the myth of Oedipus to argue that the Wheel's lesson is that fate cannot be evaded geographically but may be modulated through psychological awareness and a shift in inner orientation.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
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 cautions that intellectual approaches to the Wheel's riddle replicate Oedipus's error, arguing that the sphinx demands not rational solution but symbolic understanding and imaginative engagement.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980aside
τροχός [m.] 'wheel, wheel of torture, circlet, (potter's) wheel, round cake, etc.' (ll.), προτροχός 'front wheel' (Ath. Mech.)
Beekes documents the Greek etymological range of the wheel-term trochos, which already in ancient usage spanned instrument of motion, instrument of torture, and cosmological circle.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside