The Wheel from the Tarot Illuminati deck by Erik C. Dunne

The Wheel of Fortune is often described as the cycle of life, where days turn into weeks, seasons pass, and certainty gives way to uncertainty. But there’s something deeper here.

You are not just on the Wheel.

You are both the one riding the rim and the still point at the centre.

The secret meaning of this archetype is stillness and movement are part of the same unified Whole.

One of the most fascinating things about The Wheel is that it goes round and round. Does that mean you’re always ending up in the same place?

It’s easy to feel stuck. Like it’s the same old cycle repeating itself. Bills keep coming, routines repeat, relationships feel like they’re going in circles.

But maybe your life isn’t moving in circles at all.

Maybe it’s moving in a spiral.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed that plants grow by alternating stages of contraction and expansion. 

The plant grows taller during contraction and blossoms during expansion.

The plant reaches for the sun even from underneath the earth. It must face the resistance of gravity and the soil to break through and continue reaching for the light. 

Valentin Tomberg took this principle and applied it to psychic transformation and growth.

We go through periods of contraction and feel more heat and pressure before periods of expansion in our lives.

In other words, when we are challenged, we ascend higher on the spiral. But just like with the plant, the right balance of conditions must be met. 

If we use the resistance like we do in the gym, we grow. But even to grow stronger muscles, recovery time is just as important as the resistance during exercise.

In other words, it’s not about forcing our way through. We need to find the space that allows just as much as we find the grit to persevere.

You are both the action of the rim and the stillness of the hub at the centre. More on that later…

Is It The Wheel Spinning You or You Spinning The Wheel?

It’s easy with all the demands of daily life to feel as if the wheels are spinning you. And it’s true in the relative sense. 

There are forces in life you can’t control…economic, social and even cosmic. You’re riding the rim and all the ups and downs.

But if you are able to access the hub or stillpoint at the axis of the Wheel of Fortune, you will discover that you are spinning The Wheel.

Think of a time when everything just flowed effortlessly. Maybe you were running errands and every parking spot opened up. Maybe it was while you were engaged in a pursuit that you deeply enjoy. You didn’t even notice the time passing.

That is being both the hub and movement on the rim.

The Cross Inside The Wheel

Think of a wheel on a bicycle or car. Imagine a point at the bottom of the wheel.

As the wheel turns, that point moves upward in a vertical direction. At the same time, the vehicle moves forward in a horizontal direction.

This illustrates the principle of contraction and expansion in nature.

The most direct example of this is breathing; a natural rhythm of expansion and contraction.

The Wheel is expressing movement through rhythm. Not mechanical motion, but a living rhythm.

Another powerful symbol of this is the cross.

It’s longer on the vertical than on the horizontal which symbolizes that Consciousness is primary and the time-space physical world is secondary.

In mainstream culture, the time-space physical world isn't just primary, it's the only reality most people are ever offered.

Also, the vertical is longer as it extends below the arm of the horizontal showing that true transcendence requires going deeper within.

This deeper awareness is also reflected in the imagery of The Wheel of Fortune card. You need to “travel” inwards from the rim to the hub.

The Figures On The Wheel

It’s easy to get caught by the wheel and spun around.

Even something as mundane as feeling jealous of someone who seems to “have it all” can cause our false conditioned self to get spun to the bottom of the wheel.

If we’re not careful, we can get caught there for a while and it can begin to seem like we have no other options.

Wheel of Fortune from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck published by Universal Games

But what animal is that at the top of the wheel in the Wheel of Fortune card above?

It appears to have the body of a lion-type creature with a human head. This is a sphinx and you probably know they were used as guardians in ancient Egypt.

On the left side of the Wheel is a snake on a descending turn.

And on the bottom rising up is a dog or jackal like animal.

The spiritual lessons being taught by these images are deep. 

The serpent descending is essentially symbolic of breakdown and entropy. A snake also crawls on the ground so it definitely shows that the spiritual needs to be grounded in experience in order to actualize Love.

Without the heat and pressure, Love would remain an ideal. It needs to be experienced and only individuals can do so.

This is shown in The Lovers card where the serpent in the garden of Eden leads Adam and Eve from the immortal garden to being mortal.

This is pointing to two types of nature: fallen nature and Divine Nature.

You, as a spiritual being, needed to descend to what many call “fallen nature” in order to go through the limitations, heat and pressure.

The dog or jackal is a guide of souls in many ancient traditions. So here, it’s a soul that has passed a threshold and been purified.

In Egyptian lore, this jackal figure is known as Anubis, a guide of souls. After death, he weighs the heart against a supernatural feather representing truth and cosmic order.

If the heart balances or is lighter than the feather, the soul is free to ascend to the afterlife.

The sphinx at the top of the wheel is the most interesting of all. It really pulls the whole spiritual lesson of this tarot card together.

The sphinx is symbolic of the re-integration of the animal/divine and the human/divine. 

You have strong passions and reactions to certain situations. Someone criticizes you unfairly and instantly, something in you reacts. A surge of heat. Muscles tighten.

This is the reaction of your animal nature.

When you are able to access the divine spark within you, the Presence within you, you are able to redeem that reaction. The space and acceptance of Presence allows the contraction to dissolve. The “animal” is redeemed back to Divine Nature.

Through this alchemical process, you become more human. In other words, compassion, love and wisdom become your leading forces.

The sphinx is illuminating the fact that you can’t simply transcend your animal reactions by suppression or "bypassing."

Neither can you allow your animal reactions to take you over as they will cause more problems than you already have in your life.

The sphinx shows this “marriage” or synthesis of the animal and the human which brings in a third quality.

This third quality is a true synthesis. That is, not merely a “blending” where one + one = two.

Here, one + one = three because it’s an entirely new quality from the awareness of the integration of the two.

This third quality is the Divine quality in the individual. 

Not simply the individual dissolving into the infinite. 

But the infinite being forged in the individual.

The Wheel from the Tarot Illuminati by Erik C. Dunne

The Corners of The Wheel

If you look closely at the imagery in the card again, you’ll notice four other figures at the four corners.

Beginning at the top left corner is a human, a bull in the bottom left, a lion bottom right and an eagle top right.

These four represent the four fixed signs of the Zodiac in astrology: Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio.

There are 3 modes or qualities in astrology: cardinal, fixed and mutable.

Fixed signs stabilize, cardinal signs begin or initiate things and mutable signs are flexible and adaptable.

What this means is that for all the movement of The Wheel of Fortune itself, there are four stabilizing influences in the corners of the card.

Not only that, but the number four itself is a symbol of stability (think of a table needing four legs). This strengthens the idea of stability in the Universe.

The number four is also strongly associated with the four directions.

In Tibetan Buddhism, these four directions are represented in mandalas and understood to be real in the sense of the space within us as much as the space around us.

The four directions are understood to also be within our minds. Vast amounts of inner space exist there, which we can discover through accessing the hub of the mandala.

This means that despite the constant change and motion, there is, at the ground of Existence, stability. Meaning. This meaning we cannot grasp with our minds, but in spaces of stillness at the hub, we can be it.

The Shadow of The Wheel of Fortune

There is something important to be aware of when it comes to accessing the hub.

If you look at the image on the card, the movement inward is not optional. You have to go within. You have to go deep before you can move beyond the ups and downs.

If you try to only transcend the Wheel, unless you are in genuine presence or flow, it can easily turn into spiritual bypassing.

On the other hand, we all know what it’s like to ride the rim without any stillness to anchor our experience. It’s why when someone asks “how are you?” we answer “good” even though we’re stressed much more than we’d like to be.

When you begin to rest as Presence, even for a moment, you create space around the tightness and fear that arise from the spinning of the Wheel.

That contraction can then begin to release.  And what’s released can be integrated into your being, rather than pushed away or acted out.

This is the deeper teaching of the sphinx.

The Wheel does not stop turning. Life will continue to move through cycles of gain and loss, expansion and contraction.

But your relationship to the movement can change. You are no longer only the one being carried up and down by the Wheel.

You are also the still point at its centre; the place where experience is met, felt, and transformed.

And from that centre, what once felt like repetition begins to reveal itself as evolution.

Not a circle…
but a spiral.

The spiral only reveals itself from the centre.

If you'd like to find that centre together, a Tarot Reading or Presence Session might be exactly the next step.

I'm here.