The Wheel of Fortune turns
I go down, demeaned;
another is raised up;
far too proud
sits the king at the summit --
let him fear ruin!
for under the axis we read
about Queen Hecuba
These lines from the 13th-century Carmina Burana capture an irony and fatalism that was no doubt strong in the medieval view of the world. Fortuna, the fickle and capricious goddess of luck, was no benign benefactress, but rather a reminder of the powerlessness of human beings at the hands of fate. The Wheel is almost a medieval torture instrument, to which we are strapped, forced to endure the humbling roller-coaster ride of life.
The name of this card has remained the same from the beginning, although once or twice it is shorted to simply "The Wheel". The standard medieval symbolism is reproduced perfectly in the Visconti-Sforza card. Four figures ride the Wheel. The one to the left says regnabo "I will reign", the one at the top says regno "I reign", the one to the right says regnavi "I have reigned", and the final figure, crushed below the wheel, says sum sine regno "I am without reign". Fortuna herself stands in the middle, turning the Wheel, and blindfolded to show her indifference. The king at the top has ass's ears, highlighting his vanity and folly, and recalling the story of King Midas, whose greed earned him a similar transformation. Moakley reports that in Dante's time the Wheel was seen as having eight stations, not just four. These were humility, patience, peace, wealth, exaltation, impatience, war, and poverty.
The variations in symbolism are mostly the result of the need for simplification in presenting an intelligible scene on a small woodblock-printed card face. Fortuna is often omitted, or else made to stand at the side of the Wheel, so that only three of the four riders are shown. In the Tarot de Marseille, Fortuna and the bottom figure are both omitted, and the others become so simplified and distorted that they resemble animals, joining the ass-eared king as part of a sad menagerie. In this version, the Wheel rotates counterclockwise, so the figure to the left is descending. This resulted in an odd substitution. In some of these decks, the descending creature wears a pleated, conical tunic and his tail sprouts upward from under it. The 18th-century makers of the Lombardy tarot saw this as a flaming censer, a design reproduced with artistic sophistication by Carlo Dellarocca in the Soprafino Tarot of c.1835. The Soprafino card also shows the king at the top of the Wheel spilling coins from a sack, a motif apparently borrowed from Mitelli's Tarocchino Bolognese of nearly two centuries before.
Although the tarot trump sequence may be seen as an ascending ladder from the lowest state of humanity to the highest heavens, it is not, like the Tarocchi del Mantegna, an uninterrupted progession of increasing bliss and majesty. Rather, the tarot also captures the troubles and tragedies of the human condition. In this respect, it is more in the spirit of Petrarch's I Trionfi, which interposes visions of mortality and futility before the final divine Triumph of Eternity is acchieved. Although not as explicitly grim as the "dark cards" of the Traitor, Death, and the Devil, the Wheel of Fortune nevertheless testifies to human impotence and the futility of pursuing worldly desires.
In decks of the southern tradition (Minchiate, Tarocchino Bolognese, and Tarocco Siciliano), the Wheel, along with Love and the Chariot, is found sharing the tumultuous space between the Pope and the dark cards with the three virtues Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice. Love, the Chariot, and the Wheel of Fortune are all very earthy cards, having to do with human passions and struggles. The cardinal virtues are their natural adversaries, and there are numerous proverbs expressing the hope that Fortune will be obedient to Virtue. I doubt that the writer of the Carmina Burana shared that moralistic sentiment. It is thus fascinating to take careful note of the shifting placement of the Wheel of Fortune in the Italian tarot tradition. In Milan (and the Tarot de Marseille), she conquers the Old Man (Time), but yields to the Traitor. In Ferrara and Bologna, she conquers Fortitude but falls to Time (a more logical allegory). In Florence, she likewise conquers Fortitude, but this time succombs to the Chariot (Victory), which may suggest a rather cheeky optimism about human power to control destiny.
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