“Fortune favors the brave, because the brave are often prepared.”
To say that fortune favors the brave is to have selective bias. We celebrate those who took a risk and came back to tell us about it and conveniently forget those who were crushed by the consequences of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. We call already-rich entrepreneurs “daring” and “heroic” for their flagrant gambles using other people’s money but deride the poor person as “hubristic” and “wasteful” for spending one dollar for the personal fun of a lottery ticket. Luck becomes a positive attribute that can only be ascribed to the worthy. For the rest of us, there is only bad luck to suffer as an atonement for our lack of social standing.
While the Wheel of Fortune tarot card can signify a usually positive and surprising change in one’s circumstances outside of the expected progression in one’s life, it can also signify that moment of progression. If the Querent is not prepared for that change, it can be perceived as a “change in luck”. The daring entrepreneur, spoiled by the oft-repeated investment successes, suddenly experiences a catastrophic loss of assets. They damn their luck publicly but after investigation it is revealed that the string of investments was never sound, and the collapse was guaranteed from the start. We say their “luck has run out”, when really, luck had nothing to do with it and it was the façade that finally broke.
In this way, the Wheel of Fortune can indicate the inevitable progression of aging and time, except for those moments when it doesn’t. It can indicate to the Querent that this is the time to not quietly accept the expected outcome, but to take matters into one’s hands and create a new outcome for themselves, to change their luck and with it, their fate. Fortune favors the brave because the brave prepared themselves for the challenge.
And when someone who had properly prepared for an endeavor receives the results of their work, those results are often perceived as magnanimous and generous by those who did not see the preparatory work. From the outside, it appears as a sudden and spontaneous deposit of wealth, social standing, and increase. What good luck!
In a one-card reading, the Wheel of Fortune answers positively for positive queries and negatively for negative queries. It upholds the bias of the Querent without challenging their assumptions, which should be a loud warning for the Querent to reconsider everything before moving forward. In multiple card readings, the context of the query determines if the Wheel of Fortune is speaking to a risky action, and/or to the guaranteed progression of life. Applying to a college is a risky action. Graduating college and entering the workforce is a life progression. Marrying your sweetheart can be seen as both.
Ill-dignified, the Wheel of Fortune calls attention to poor decisions and/or bad luck plaguing the Querent. Often the two are intertwined in that a deliberate misguided choice that led to a bad circumstance causes the Querent to suffer more in that circumstance than otherwise expected. Failing to check the car’s tires before a road trip (poor decision) leads to a tire failure in the middle of nowhere (bad circumstance) and now the Querent has to pay a substantial tow and repair bill (increased woe) to get the car road-worthy again. When the context of the query leans against risk-taking, the Wheel of Fortune warns that proceeding with the risk may cause more problems than it solves. Just as a flipped coin landing heads up five times in a row, doesn’t guarantee that it will land heads up on the sixth, so should the Querent not take the presence of the Wheel of Fortune as a promise that something will happen in their life one way or the other. If they do nothing other than what they had planned, they already know the outcome. But if they are brave and plan for something different, how favorable can they become?
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