The Wheel of Fortune: Rider-Waite

For the most part, Waite's version of the Wheel of Fortune is a synthesis of two of Lévi's designs. The disc itself is copied very closely from the Sanctum Regnum, while the creatures around its circumference are based on those in the Clef. Waite says as much in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot: "In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Éliphas Lévi, who has furnished several variants. [. . .] I have, however, presented Typhon in his serpent form."

While the Wheel of Fortune is traditionally represented as either standing in the ground or mounted on a post, Waite has it floating in the sky -- a choice which presumably reflects Lévi's association of it with the wheels of Ezekiel. Rather than an actual wheel with hub, spokes, and rim, it has become a solid disc marked with lines suggesting those features. For the most part, the disc is identical to the one portrayed in the Sanctum Regnum, but there are a few changes. The physics terms have been removed, as have the 24 red "paw-prints" accompanying the letters of the Tetragrammaton. (Of these, Lévi's Transcendental Magic says that to "these four-and-twenty signs, crowned with a triple flower of light, must be referred the twenty-four thrones of heaven and the twenty-four crowned elders in the Apocalypse.") The letters TARO have been moved onto the disc itself, replacing the images of the four living creatures, and the latter have been moved to the four corners of the card and rearranged so as to correspond to the fixed signs of the zodiac rather than to the vision of Ezekiel. Each of the living creatures is holding (and perhaps reading?) a book -- an iconographic convention that normally indicates that the creatures are being used as symbols of the four evangelists, Matthew (the man), Mark (the lion), Luke (the ox), and John (the eagle).

A further oddity is the Hebrew letter yodh -- the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, located at 1:30 on the wheel -- which at first glance appears to have been rotated 90 degrees from its proper orientation. If you try to correct this error by rotating it, though, you will find that it is impossible -- that what we have is actually a rotated mirror image of the Hebrew letter.

I find it hard to believe that Waite could have made such an error. These Golden Dawn types were completely obsessed with the Tetragrammaton, and the letter yodh was a particular favorite of Waite's; a sort of "yodh confetti" appears as a decorative motif on several of his cards (the Aces of Cups and Swords, and the Moon). I suppose this sort of error is easier to make when a word is being written around the circumference of a circle rather than horizontally, and we must also keep in mind that the card was actually drawn by Pamela Colman Smith rather than by Waite himself, but I still find it surprising -- particularly given that they had Lévi's picture, with its correctly oriented yodh, to copy from. If the modification was deliberate, Waite must have meant something by it, but I can't imagine what. (This anomalous yodh has been preserved, whether deliberately or through ignorance of Hebrew, in some other Rider-Waite-based decks, such as the Hanson-Roberts, BOTA, etc.)

Hebrew is read from right to left, a fact which occultists have considered significant. (For example Jean-Baptiste Alliette, the first known professional Tarot reader, is better known as "Etteilla" -- that being the "kabbalistic," i.e. right-to-left, reading of his name.) If we start at yodh and read from right to left -- that is, counterclockwise around the disc -- we will find the Tetragrammaton interspersed with the letters TORA in that order. I am not aware of Lévi's ever having mentioned TORA as another possible reading of ROTA/TARO, but Waite was certainly aware of it. On his High Priestess card, the priestess holds a scroll labeled TORA -- or perhaps it is the more conventional spelling, Torah; the part of the scroll where the final h would be written is hidden inside the folds of the priestess's gown. Waite's decision to hide or omit the h shows that he intended to link the Torah with the Wheel and the Tarot -- and, via the staurogram, with the Cross. I am reminded of the Bible Wheel created (but no longer endorsed) by Richard Amiel McGough; it involves "rolling up" the 66 books of the Protestant Bible like a scroll, creating a wheel-shaped diagram which McGough links with cruciform halos of the type worn by the Saint-Sernin Christ. The word torah means "law," which is also the meaning of dharma; I have already pointed out the Wheel of Fortune's similarity to the Dharma Wheel of Buddhism.

A deck of cards is like a codex, which is like a scroll, which is like a wheel, the spokes of which are like a cross -- all these things can be linked. The question is whether all this linkage has any coherent meaning, and specifically whether it has anything to do with the original Wheel of Fortune concept. We shall return to this question later.

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Turning now to the three creatures positioned around the wheel, we find that they are based on Lévi's but differ in important ways. The sphinx is blue as in the Tarot de Marseille and wears an Egyptian headdress as in the Clef, but it has no wings, and it appears to have its tail between its legs like a beaten dog. Like its Marseille counterpart, and unlike Lévi's version, it holds its sword in its left hand and appears to be almost cradling it rather than wielding it -- presumably because it is after all a sphinx and lacks opposable thumbs. Strangest of all, Waite's sphinx is holding the sword by the blade rather than by the hilt! The sword is in the "hands" of a creature completely incapable of using a sword -- a strong indication that Waite does not see the sphinx as some idealized depiction of a fully realized Man.

The creature on the bottom right side of the wheel corresponds to Lévi's Hermanubis -- a conflation of the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Anubis, bearing the caduceus of the former and having the dog's head of the latter. Waite's version has no caduceus and thus cannot be clearly identified as Herm-anubis as opposed to common-or-garden Anubis. He is completely naked, even though both Anubis and Hermanubis -- and even the dog of the Marseille card -- are always depicted with clothing; and is red, even though Anubis's characteristic color is black. (I assume the blue sphinx, yellow snake, and red cynocephalus comprise a color scheme corresponding to some alchemical folderol or other, but who knows.) The position of this creature is also very strange. Rather than grasping or climbing the wheel, as those in his place generally do, he has his back to it and is somehow adhering to it in defiance of gravity. He is also so positioned as to occupy two of the traditional stations of the Wheel simultaneously: the bottom (sum sine regno) and the rising position (regnabo). Anubis as the god of embalming and mummification, and as psychopomp (whence the identification with Hermes), is connected both with death and with the hope of resurrection

The snake is also defying gravity, barely even touching the wheel. Waite explicitly tells us that it is "Typhon in his serpent form," so it is presumably based on the Proteus/Typhon figure labeled "hyle" in the Clef. Typhon did not really have a "serpent form"; like his mate Echidna, he was only part serpentine, and is generally portrayed as a winged giant with snake-like legs. Waite has perhaps confused him with Python, with whom he is associated (but not identified) in the Homeric hymns. The choice of a serpent for the descending creature perhaps reflects biblical symbolism. Typhon made war on Zeus and was cast down into Tartarus -- like "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which . . . was cast out into the earth" after losing the "war in heaven" described in Revelation 12. Waite's comments in the Pictorial Key suggests that all three of the creatures around the wheel are supposed to be examples of "Egyptian symbolism," so he must have had in mind the longstanding tradition identifying Typhon with the Egyptian god Set -- but Set was never portrayed as even partly serpentine. If the snake is an Egyptian symbol, I would naturally identify it as Apep. While Set is considered to be the Egyptian Typhon, and while Set and Apep are definitely distinct characters, it would perhaps not be too much of a stretch to think of Apep as "Typhon in his serpent form." Apep is appropriate for the descending position on the wheel because he is the quintessential defeated monster. The Egyptians never portrayed him except as being defeated by Ra or Set or one of the other deities, out of a superstitious fear than any other portrayal would give power to Apep.

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Overall, I have to admit that my first impression of the Rider-Waite version of this card is that Waite made rather a mess of things, presenting a congeries of symbols with no organic connection with one another. But perhaps a bit of randomness is appropriate enough for a card representing Fortune.