The letters on the wheel
The Wheel of Fortune is lettered T A R O around its rim, alternating with the Hebrew letters of the name of God. Waite reads TARO backward and around as ROTA, Latin for wheel.
In the tradition
The word play goes back to the French occultists. Read from different points, the four letters give TARO, ROTA, ORAT and TORA, and Waite counterchanges them with the Hebrew letters yod, he, vav, he, the four-letter name of God.
The inner spokes carry the alchemical signs for mercury, sulphur, salt and water. Waite does not explain them. Where older decks had figures climbing the wheel and falling from it, a lesson about worldly fortune, this wheel carries emblems.
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.
- Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854 to 1856). The French occultist whose readings of the trumps Waite often followed or argued with.
Updated October 9, 2026.
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