Turning circles
One of my daily tarot card draws today was the Wheel of Fortune, and it got me thinking about change. The Wheel represents the process of change in our lives, the ebb and flow of energies around us. Sometimes it seems like the universe is on our side, and life flows effortlessly, and at other times it's as if we are wading through treacle to get anything done. Traditionally, the Wheel of Fortune symbolises good luck, and in a reading suggests that good fortune is coming our way. For me though, it's more subtle than that, an indication of a change in our fortunes which may or may not be considered good. The Marseilles tarot, the first deck I learned with and still a favourite, has a typically medieval depiction of this card, showing a human figure descending in fortune as a monkey rises up from his so-called animal nature. Atop the Wheel sits a king, with crown and sceptre. But the Wheel is moving, and soon the human will reach the depths, the king will begin to descend and the monkey will be at the top. When I saw the card (from the Greenwood deck; scroll down the page to see the image) in my draw this morning, it made me think of the speed of change. Sometimes it is slow, so that nothing seems to change, and we chafe in frustration at our seemingly distant goals. And sometimes, life moves so fast that we can barely keep up, and we wake one day to find ourselves on a completely different part of the Wheel to where we thought we were. In the Greenwood depiction, the Wheel is a cloak, which we weave ourselves, watched and guided by the three shrouded figures of the fates.
This version of the card points straight to the key question: who turns the Wheel? Are we in control of our own destinies, or at the mercy of some higher being? For me, it's that old truism that we can't always control what life throws at us, but we can control how we react to it. The Wheel may turn around us, but our true self is the unmoving hub at the centre. When life starts to spin circles around us, we hold to our own deep stillness. We may be handed a thread, but we can choose what we weave it into. As if we are holding the thread as we weave, able to move or manipulate it, but aware that it has its origins somewhere beyond us, fed to us from a place beyond our comprehension.
So are we just going around in circles, forever repeating ourselves? It's certainly true that many of us find ourselves repeating the same mistakes and situations in our lives, whether it be difficult relationships or a lack of self-confidence at work. We weave the same patterns into our lives, those laid down in childhood or by our social conditioning. But with self-awareness and a willingness to learn, we can transform the circles into spirals, so that while we may seem to be back in the same place, we have more awareness and are able to meet the challenge in a different way. A circle is a sacred space, as depicted in the Druidcraft tarot. We all have the power to stand at the centre and make it our own.
This version of the card points straight to the key question: who turns the Wheel? Are we in control of our own destinies, or at the mercy of some higher being? For me, it's that old truism that we can't always control what life throws at us, but we can control how we react to it. The Wheel may turn around us, but our true self is the unmoving hub at the centre. When life starts to spin circles around us, we hold to our own deep stillness. We may be handed a thread, but we can choose what we weave it into. As if we are holding the thread as we weave, able to move or manipulate it, but aware that it has its origins somewhere beyond us, fed to us from a place beyond our comprehension.
So are we just going around in circles, forever repeating ourselves? It's certainly true that many of us find ourselves repeating the same mistakes and situations in our lives, whether it be difficult relationships or a lack of self-confidence at work. We weave the same patterns into our lives, those laid down in childhood or by our social conditioning. But with self-awareness and a willingness to learn, we can transform the circles into spirals, so that while we may seem to be back in the same place, we have more awareness and are able to meet the challenge in a different way. A circle is a sacred space, as depicted in the Druidcraft tarot. We all have the power to stand at the centre and make it our own.
