For the past few years I have been working mainly with the Fire Tarot deck. I really like this deck, and although I have always appreciated the imagery of these particular cards in an aesthetic sense, whenever I do readings I don’t really delve too deeply into the actual symbolism on the cards, rather referring to the traditional meanings based on the Rider-Waite deck . I’ve now decided to meditate on the actual images on these particular cards, as I feel this would be an interesting way to gain further insight into the tarot. This is probably something I should have done ages ago, when I first got them, but anyway better late than never.
So, yesterday I started with the Wheel of Fortune card. Traditionally (well as I’ve always understood it), this card signifies good luck/ good fortune when in an upright position, and bad luck/ bad fortune when reversed. It also represents the cyclical nature of things. When I was younger and going through a really unhappy period in my life, I found a lot of comfort in this card’s message of ‘things will improve/ the wheel is always turning’ etc. I found it comforting to know that when you are at your lowest point - do not despair - as it means the wheel will soon be ascending once again.
In the Fire Tarot deck, the wheel of fortune card depicts a wheel in the sky. It is composed of, well, fire lol, and within the wheel is a man. When I started gazing at this card in a meditative state, it appeared to me that the man was actually controlling the motion of the wheel, not just simply ‘going along for the ride’. The message that I got from this was that ‘you ARE in control of your life/destiny’. You are steering the wheel, and can choose to speed up the cycle, slow it down, reverse it’s direction, or even pause or stop it completely. I realise this must seem very obvious to members of this forum, and even though I KNOW this, I often ‘forget’ when things in life seem to be going badly and I start feeling overwhelmed by negativity. Also, often in my life, when things are going well, there is a little voice in the back of my head telling me- ‘well, you’ve had a good few days/weeks/ months- soon you’ll be experiencing a bad period again. The wheel keeps turning after all.’ And, of course, due to expecting that things will turn bad, I end up attracting that very negativity into my life, and I do end up experiencing a period of bad luck. I realise now that I need to make a conscious effort to change this pattern of thinking- I need to remember that I can ‘pause the wheel’ when things are going well!
Another idea that occurred to me while looking at this image was that the wheel (being a circle), is infinite, and in reality there is no top/ bottom, no fixed points. Just like in space there is no direction- there is no North/ South, East/West, up/down etc. These are man-made concepts, which are used to describe the position of something RELATIVE to something else. I am still trying to understand the exact meaning of this message, so apologies if these thoughts sound a bit jumbled. I think it has something to do with, again, deciding for yourself ‘where you are’ in your life. Also, things aren’t always what they appear to be at first, so a seemingly shitty situation could in fact turn out to be beneficial. Sometimes we need to change the way we look at things, we need to look at the situation from a different PERSPECTIVE.
Well, that’s what I’ve got so far. I found it quite inspiring and a nice little reminder of the power that is within us all.