“The Stars turn, and a time presents itself.” -David Lynch and Mark Frost, “Twin Peaks: The Return”
The Tenth card in the Major Arcana reminds us that everything is a cycle; everything repeats over and over and over. Just look at the Cosmos, at nature, at gravity, the way the ocean works, the way the sun and the moon work, the way gravity makes everything perform this perfect little dance of cyclical symmetry; perfectly oiled and machined, the cosmic analogue watch that has been ticking in perfect time since the big bang. What about the cycles in your life? The loops? The wheels that keep turning?
Loops are really interesting. I often hear folks tell me, especially when I am struggling with someone in my life, that the universe gives you the same kind of people and the same kind of struggles over and over again because those are the loops you need to work on; the personal interactions you need to address or the stuff in your own life that needs to be fixed. Are we just on cosmic loops that we simply cannot break; like those zany robots in Westworld? Are we just cosmic clocks looping around and around again; wound up at some point and set forth to repeat, repeat, repeat? Maybe. But we also have free will. On the last entry, we talked about Justice; the card after this one in the Major Arcana. This order is important because sometimes fortune smiles on us and sometimes it frowns on us; later justice steps in to correct something that fortune go wrong. But at this point in the journey, we are simply subjects to fortunes wheel; at the whim of a looping and spinning cosmos that will determine our fate at random. Can we exert any form of control over this wheel. No. But can we exert control over ourselves? Very much yes.
I think this could be one reason why we see the name TAROT spelled out on the wheel; beginning with T and cycling through A, R, O and then back to the same T we started with. Although fortune, fate, chance whatever you want to call it will ultimately play a role, we can use the tarot and self-introspection to come to terms with what fortune throws our way. By using the Tarot to help us better understand the world around us, we can better understand our loops; our cycles, the things that keep coming back and why those things keep coming back.
The wheel also is a harbinger of change and transformation; the alchemical symbols etched on its center let us know that change is possible if we know how to do it. Perhaps the only way to break a loop is not to try and change the loop but to try and change yourself; to change the way you view the world or the way you react to fate’s determinations about where you end up; as The Midnight’s new single tells us; to “Change your Heart of Die”.
So when you see The Wheel of Fortune, think about your loops. Think about how you might better know yourself in order to better understand the patterns and cycles that seem to persist in your life and how you might need to start a journey of change in order to break them.