Articles · Lessons
Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card Meaning
The Wheel of Fortune tarot card means change: cycles turning, luck shifting, and life moving whether you push it or not. Most of the time, it's good news arriving on its own schedule.
Quick facts
- Number: 10, Major Arcana
- Upright: destiny, fortune, luck, success, elevation
- Reversed: the cycle still turns; increase, abundance, excess
What the Wheel of Fortune means
The Wheel turns through life's ups and downs, but the card denies pure chance: a guiding purpose runs underneath the spin. Drawing it means change is in motion, often with a turn of luck attached. Your job isn't to grab the wheel. It's to stay loose and ride it.
The Wheel reversed
Unusually, Waite's reversed meanings here stay bright: increase, abundance, overflow. Many modern readers instead read the reversal as luck delayed or a cycle resisted. Either way, the wheel hasn't stopped. It never does.
What's on the card
A great wheel turns in the sky, lettered so it reads TARO or ROTA (Latin for wheel) depending on where you start, with a sphinx on top and four winged creatures in the corners. Riddle, wheel, and watchers: fate with an audience.
The Wheel in a daily draw
Change and a turn of luck are moving today. Go with the current instead of fighting it, and stay open to where it takes you. The Toe Bean Tarot app deals a daily card just like this, with the full meaning attached, on Google Play (iPhone coming soon).
The Wheel sits at card ten, the hinge of the Major Arcana. Its favorite lesson, that endings feed beginnings, gets its full treatment in the Death card. The rest live in all 78 tarot card meanings.