Here Fortuna stands apart from the wheel and apparently governs its rotation remotely by means of the authority symbolized by her crown and scepter. The wheel, then, would appear to be consciously obeying her rather than being turned by mechanical means. Miélot might have had Ezekiel's wheels in mind ("Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, . . . for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels"), a connection Éliphas Lévi was to make some centuries later, or he might have moved Fortuna off to the side for purely aesthetic reasons, to make the composition less cluttered. Fortuna is portrayed winged and blindfolded, symbolizing her superhuman nature and her indifference to the merits of those on her wheel. Wise man or fool, one event happeneth to them all.
If the figure under the wheel in the Carmina Burana illustration might possibly be a corpse, his counterpart in Miélot's version leaves no room for doubt -- and he clearly died still embracing the wheel that killed him. The monarch perched atop the wheel seems oddly dressed to me, with robes that look almost like a nightgown; pink is hardly a regal color, and the bright reds elsewhere in the picture make it clear that it cannot be explained as faded paint. The two figures on the sides of the wheel are dressed in countercharged color schemes -- one with a red shirt and blue hose; the other, vice versa. In each case, the part of the body nearest the top of the wheel is clothed in red, and that nearest the bottom, in blue -- almost as if their clothes change from blue to red as they ascend and then back to blue as they descend. (For consistency, the monarch should be dressed all in red, and the corpse in blue, but perhaps pink and gray are close enough.) Fortuna is dressed in the same color scheme, wearing an outer garment of red over an inner garment of blue. If red represents the top of the wheel (success) and blue the bottom (ruin), perhaps Fortuna's costume of red-covering-blue means that she indeed appears beautiful outward but within is full of dead men's bones.
What are we to make of the dead man, holding tight to the wheel even as it rolls over him? Embracing what kills him seems the epitome of foolishness -- but on the other hand, letting go of the wheel at this point makes no sense. He's already at the bottom, so holding onto the wheel can only improve his fortunes; whereas letting go would leave him at the bottom, with no way to regain his lost position. In the long term, though, the wheel will raise him only to bring him down again, so it doesn't really matter. As I've said, the Wheel offers no desirable options -- but Miélot hints at an alternative: on the left side of the picture, behind Fortuna, is a rocky hill composed of enormous boulders. Anyone who could reach the top of that hill would be higher even than the monarch's perch, and the position would be a stable one -- but it would mean doing the hard work of climbing, not just hitching a ride on Fortuna's wheel.
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Dürer did a woodcut of the Wheel of Fortune as an illustration for Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, which was published a few decades after the appearance of the earliest known Tarot cards. Dürer's version is quite different from the others we have looked at. Its relevance to Tarot iconography is obvious, though the nature of the relationship is unclear. The Tarot of Marseille may well have been directly influenced by Dürer's woodcut, but of course that is not possible for the Visconti-Sforza, which predates it. It is possible, but not likely, that Dürer was influenced by the Italian cards and then in turn influenced the French ones. More probably, some lost (or at least unknown-to-me) source lies behind both the Dürer woodcut and the Tarot. But before taking this line of discussion any further, we had best take a look at the image itself.
The major innovation here is the addition of animal characteristics to the figures on the wheel -- a feature which is universal within the Tarot tradition, so that in many decks the Wheel becomes the second trump (the other is the Moon) to feature no human beings.
We have seen that in Miélot's version, the ascending and descending figures are so dressed that those parts of their bodies that are above the hub of the wheel are clothed in red, and those below, in blue -- and I have mentioned that, for consistency, the one at the top of the wheel should be dressed entirely in red. Dürer takes this idea to the next level. The ascending figure is an ass above the waist; the descending one is an ass below the waist; and at the top of the wheel, where a more conventional artist would depict a crowned king, Dürer gives us -- simply an ass. If I am making out Dürer's picture correctly, the ass is reaching out to grasp the moon -- which would of course be impossible even if it had hands. All the figures on the wheel are dressed alike, in the garb of a fool, so that even the descending figure appears to have ass's ears because his fool's cap is so decorated. The fourth figure, the one who should be under the wheel and who, in Dürer's scheme, would be the only fully human one, has been omitted entirely -- an innovation also adopted by the Tarot de Marseille and decks influenced by it. Also all-but-omitted is Fortuna herself, who appears only as a hand reaching down from heaven to turn the wheel. (These disembodied hands-from-clouds would later be used extensively by Waite in his highly innovative Minor Arcana.)
The wheel itself is much more realistically depicted. Where more traditional depictions have a huge free-standing wheel, supported by nothing and lacking even an axle, Dürer's wheel is mounted on a stand and turned by a crank. Rather than the mystical visions of Ezekiel, it suggests an ordinary piece of manmade machinery. The placing of the wheel on a raised stand also means that it no longer crushes anyone. If the traditional fourth figure had been included, he would simply be clinging to the underside of the wheel, unharmed and still several feet above the ground.
Consider for a moment how completely Dürer's innovations change the meaning of the Wheel of Fortune. In the conventional version of the motif, both the allure of Fortune and her ultimate treachery are clear. She promises a crown and throne to those who trust her, but in the end crushes them mercilessly. Dürer's wheel, in contrast, promises only to turn you into an ass, and threatens nothing worse than an implied return to full humanity and a chance to go around again. The image conveys not so much a feeling of treachery and tragedy as one of complete and utter pointlessness.
What motivates those who cling to Dürer's wheel? Surely they are not drawn in by the promise of a pair of long ears, a tail, and four fine hoofs! No one consciously aspires to become an ass. We can only conclude that they want what the ass at the top is reaching for -- the moon! -- and that they delusionally believe the wheel will carry them high enough to reach out and grasp it. Of course each will have observed that all his predecessors have transformed into asses and failed to obtain the moon, but each thinks he himself will be different. Each believes that he has discovered the secret: to reach the top without becoming an ass and then, opposable thumbs still intact, reach out and take it! But such is the magic of the Wheel that he inevitably does become an ass -- and anyway, the hoofs aren't really what stops him from grasping the moon. A wheel mounted on a stand on the ground just isn't the sort of thing that ever could allow anyone to reach the moon. (Neither, for that matter, is the rocky hill which also appears in Dürer's picture.) Dürer's Wheel has something of the Tower of Babel about it -- the attempt to reach heaven by means of an earthbound structure, and the subsequent loss of the power of intelligible speech (transformed, in this case, into the braying of an ass). But the builders of the Tower did not fail because their speech was confounded, nor do the riders on the wheel fail because they become asses. In both cases, they fail because what they are attempting is by its nature impossible. The means are not commensurate to the ends in view.
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