Of course, such a disclaimer will not appear on every single post that reflects views of mine that have since been revised – but with regards to some posts (such as this one) I feel it is especially important to make that point particularly clear. I find insertion of such notices to be more intellectually honest than simply deleting the post.
You can’t stop the wheel of time any more than you can stop the twin suns of Tatooine (Tatoo I and Tatoo II) from setting. (By the way – it is those two twin suns that are featured near the upper right-hand corner of this card to signify the inevitability of change — as Shmi Skywalker used them to illustrate this to her son, Anakin, before he left Tatooine in hopes of becoming a Jedi.)
According to Greek Mythology, the riddle of the Sphinx (shown guarding the wall near the lower left-hand corner of this card) was “What has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?” Only Oedipus got the answer right – thereby surviving his encounter with the Sphinx. He answered that it is a human being, who walks on all four in infancy (the morning of life) the two legs at the prime of life (the noon of life) and the two legs plus a cand, the third leg, in old age (the evening of life).
And then, of course, afte it’s all over, you die in this realm of existence and become one with the Force – and a new generation starts it all over again.
This cycle is inevitable – and it is the way things should be. None of us is meant to last forever in this realm of existence.
In many decks, this card is referred to as the “Wheel of Fortune” – but here I call it the “Wheel of Time”, as often there is confusion about what “Wheel of Fortune” means.
I depict the wheel here as a watermill with a clock’s face on it’s side – continuously turning inevitably as watermills do, powered by the water springing from the mountain as it falls into the stream below. On the left, I show someone in the morning of life as a baby in a red baby carriage. On the top, standing above the wheel, I show her in the prime of her life wearing a dress the same red color as the carriage she rode in as an infant. On the right, I show her in old age on a boardwalk, leaning on a cane, wearing a cape of, once again, the same red color. And below the wheel, I show her grave – where she lies after having lived her life, a flower of that same red color growing from the base of the tombstone. She is now one with the Force – and someone else goes through life now in her place and eventually will die as well.
Divinatory Meaning
Once again, I include the section of the divinatory meaning of the card for the sole purpose of explaining why I am not giving a divinatory meaning for it. It is because the idea of listing a divinatory meaning is based on a misunderstanding of how cartomancy works. The power isn’t in the cards – the power is in you.
It isn’t about what card comes up randomly after the shuffle in a certain position. No – it’s what you see in the card – and even if the same thing is printed on the same card, you can see very different things in the card depending on what you know inside. Through the Force may that include all that which truly needs to be revealed through the reading.
