The Wheel of Fortune: Who Is Turning It?
Tarot Symbolism & Art
A crowned figure sits at the top of a wheel. Someone else is rising, another is descending, and a fourth has reached the bottom. It is easy to notice the crown and call the picture lucky. But the wheel contains more than one position, and the person turning it may be just as important as the people riding it. Reading the Wheel of Fortune closely begins with those relationships, before deciding what the image might mean for a question today.
Look at the whole rim
The Morgan Library & Museum’s record for tarot card M.630.9 gives us a specific example from the Visconti-Sforza cards, catalogued to Milan, about 1450–1480. A winged, blindfolded woman personifying Fortune occupies the wheel’s centre. A man with ass’s ears and a sceptre sits above, while other figures occupy the sides and the space below.
The accompanying scrolls make the contrast explicit. Their Latin inscriptions distinguish reigning, the prospect of reigning, having reigned, and being without a kingdom. These are positions in relation to power, rather than four interchangeable portraits of success. The picture lets the viewer see several conditions together.
Our editorial reading is that the circle changes what the crown can promise. A top position in a rotating structure does not look quite like a secure throne standing on the ground. The surrounding figures qualify it. That is an interpretation of the visual relationship, not a forecast that any particular successful person must shortly lose everything.
Try covering part of the image with a piece of paper. Look first at the person above, then reveal the figures at the sides and below. Notice how the context alters your description. An isolated detail can invite a simpler story than the complete composition supports.
Fortune also turns a wheel in a book
The motif belongs to more than tarot. In the Morgan’s MS M.324, folio 34v, catalogued to Paris about 1350, an illustration associated with the Roman de la Rose places Fortune beside a wheel. She is crowned and blindfolded, with one hand turning a spoke. Four men occupy different positions: ascending, enthroned above, descending and grasping the bottom.
Comparing the two objects is more revealing than declaring one the secret key to the other. In the manuscript description, the turning hand is conspicuous; in the tarot record, Fortune is positioned at the centre. Both compositions organize people around a wheel, but they place the personification differently. That difference deserves to remain visible.
A shared motif is evidence of a visual relationship worth studying. It does not, by itself, establish that one surviving object was copied directly from the other. We would need more evidence to trace a particular workshop’s source. The comparison can still enrich a reading by showing that artists had more than one way to connect Fortune, movement and human status.
A wheel can carry a moral argument
The University of Glasgow Library’s exhibition catalogue describes another setting: a Paris manuscript of 1467, MSS Hunter 371–372, containing a French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. Its opening picture shows Boccaccio pointing toward Fortune and the wheel on which figures rise and fall. The work presents stories about the falls of famous men.
The catalogue connects Fortune with the medieval literary world of Boethius and Chaucer. Here, then, the image participates in an argument about worldly standing and its instability. It is not simply an illustrated prize announcement. The book surrounding the miniature supplies a context that disappears when the wheel is detached from its page.
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This offers a useful question for modern card readers: what larger story am I bringing to this picture? A guidebook, a remembered saying or a previous reading can influence which figure catches the eye. Naming that influence helps us distinguish an observation about the artwork from a story we have learned to tell through it.
The title travels across different editions
The V&A’s history of tarot cards places several Wheels together. Its examples include a B-P Grimaud card published in Paris in 1891, an engraving and colour-stencilled card reprinted in Milan by F. Teodoro Dotti in 1823–1840, and a lithographic Wheel designed by Pamela Colman Smith, represented by a 1916 reprint.
These labels identify different publishers, processes and editions. They allow a reader to compare actual objects instead of treating “the Wheel of Fortune” as one unchanging image. The title provides a point of connection; it cannot substitute for looking at the version in front of us.
When working with your own deck, write down the artist or edition if known. Then describe the visible arrangement without importing every detail from another pack. Is there a human hand? Who occupies the centre? What sits outside the rim? A feature absent from your card can still inform a historical comparison, but it should not quietly become something you claim to see.
Movement is not a timetable
A wheel is a powerful way to picture change because several positions can coexist around one moving structure. Yet a still image supplies no date for the next turn. Neither a crown nor an ascending figure establishes the probability of receiving a promotion, winning money or hearing from someone.
There is also a difference between recognizing uncertainty and deciding that nothing can be influenced. A person may have little control over a project’s external circumstances while retaining choices about preparation, communication or scope. A reflective reading can help frame those choices without pretending to control the wheel.
Consider an invented example: a small exhibition depends on a borrowed venue. “My fortune will rise” gives the organizer no practical information. “Which part of this plan depends on another person’s decision?” identifies a real uncertainty. “What can I prepare while waiting?” identifies an available action. The card supplies a language for examining the situation; ordinary evidence supplies the reasons for the plan.
A reading with room for more than one position
For a short exercise, choose a current situation and look around the entire wheel before writing. Name something that seems established, something that is developing, and something that has already changed. These are original reflection prompts, not a reconstruction of a medieval reading method or a universal tarot spread.
For each statement, add the evidence you have. A confirmed appointment is different from an expectation; a missed deadline is different from a fear. If the facts do not support a dramatic rise or fall, leave the statement modest. The picture need not force every day into a turning point.
Finish by identifying one response that remains reasonable under more than one outcome. You might clarify an agreement, prepare an alternative or preserve a record of a decision. That keeps the reading useful even while the external result remains unknown.
Return to the turning hand
The historical wheel offers more than a single lucky figure. It can bring power, reversal, dependence and the limits of a viewpoint into the same small space. Comparing the turning hand, the centre and the rim makes that visual language richer.
When the Wheel appears again, notice whom you instinctively identify with. Then look at the rest of the picture. A thoughtful reading can hold several possibilities together without converting any of them into a guarantee.
Sources and further reading
The four linked collection and exhibition resources support the object descriptions. The comparisons and practical prompts are original Precise Arcana editorial interpretation. Both illustrations are newly generated conceptual artworks, not reproductions of the cited objects. Explore our Wheel of Fortune card, Major Arcana guide and story about Temperance’s visual attributes for related reading.
Originally published at https://precisearcana.com on November 10, 2026.
