The four living creatures
A man, an eagle, a bull and a lion sit in the four corners of the World and the Wheel of Fortune. They are the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation.
In the tradition
Ezekiel saw four living creatures, each with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, and Revelation sets four beasts with the same faces around the throne of God. In his Commentary on Matthew, Jerome gave one to each gospel writer: the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke and the eagle to John.
Medieval art put them in the corners of countless pictures of Christ in majesty. The old World cards did the same, and Waite kept them, adding wings and books on the Wheel.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Various, The Bible (King James Version 1611; the Latin Vulgate, 4th century). The source of much of the Temple, Eden and Revelation imagery in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
- Jerome, Commentary on Matthew (398 CE). The source of the pairing of the four living creatures with the four evangelists.
Updated October 9, 2026.
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