Wheel of Fortune
The Wheel of Fortune is card 10 of the Major Arcana, the card of cycles. Readers traditionally take it as change, turning points and the reminder that no situation stays the same forever.
- Major Arcana
- Card 10
- Golden Dawn
- Jupiter
- Upright
- cycles, change, turning points
- Reversed
- resistance to change, a stuck cycle
Upright
Rise and fall is the oldest meaning attached to the wheel, and readers still use it that way. The card is read as a turning point, a change of circumstances or a pattern coming round again. It asks you to notice the cycle you are in rather than to take any one moment as permanent.
Reversed
The reversed wheel is often read as resistance to a change that is already under way, or as a cycle that keeps repeating because nothing about it has shifted. It can be a nudge to change your part in the pattern.
In love and at work
In love it is linked with timing: a meeting that feels fated, or a relationship moving into a new phase. At work readers see a change of fortune, a new role, or the ups and downs of a field that runs in cycles.
In the picture
A great orange wheel marked with letters and alchemical symbols floats in the sky. A sphinx sits on top, a snake slides down one side, and a red jackal-headed figure rises on the other. In the four corners, winged figures read books on clouds. The Golden Dawn gave the card to Jupiter.
In a Caelumia profile
When Wheel of Fortune comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Transformation, Restlessness, Mysticism.
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.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.
Updated September 28, 2026.
See it in your own profile
Caelumia reads your whole birth chart and your numbers together, and shows where they agree. Your profile is free to start, and your first results appear while you answer.