Standing In The Center of the Wheel

A contemplation of the experience that is part of the symbolism of The Wheel of Fortune in the Major Arcana

The Circle That Looks Like A Line

All lives - no matter how privileged, comfortable, aligned, or stable- have their ups and downs. At least that is how we often experience it given the usual human outlook on linearity and events— and certainly that is how it most often is manifested in our emotional reactions to events. This is the so called curse of the turning wheel: the seemingly inevitable fulfilment of the well known rule usually related to gravity, “What goes up must come back down [even if it can go back up again afterward].” Many people seek out spiritual paths, either consciously or subconsciously, in large part out of a desire to escape this up-and-down pattern to their lives. This can lead to what is known as toxic positivity (forced behaviours and speech that are all focused on the positive - whether it is really there or not- and entirely devoid of acknowledging the negative), which in turn can lead to spiritual bypassing if it goes unchecked long enough; or it can lead to simply massive disappointment when despite putting much time, effort, research, and true self-work into the path, you still find yourself suddenly in the clutches of one of those downturns again. Either of these results ultimately stymies the spiritual seeker (albeit the former much sooner than the latter does), and can even cause people to drift away from or abandon their Path entirely. It seems like a catch-22, with no real answer or solution that doesn’t have a collateral cost that negates the value of the ‘cure’ in question. That catch-22, however, is an illusion founded on a flawed assumption about what the happiness enlightenment can bring really is or means. The REAL solution to how to find peace amongst this unavoidably ever-shifting up and down in our lives is the one mapped out in The Wheel of Fortune.

Living as we are usually taught to do, as humans, in a society of linearity-based reasoning, our perspective on these ups and downs of our lives is that there is some baseline axis - a straight line that is a threshold of neutrality- running along the middle of our emotional range. Subsequently, we reason that if were we to graph the “ups” and “downs” of our experiences in superimposition over said line, we would get something like an uneven wave form whose peaks and troughs center around that neutral position. While that conceptualisation is both common (if often unconscious) and completely understandable of someone to arrive at, given the intellectual circumstances...... it isn’t necessarily the most accurate conceptualisation of this phenomenon we all experience. Not by a long shot. That is what, among other insights, The Wheel of Fortune attempts to convey to us— not only the fact that the linearity-based paradigm of our way of seeing and labelling our emotional experiences is insufficient and flawed, but also the existence of a far more accurate alternative perspective and the means of reaching it.

The Wheel reveals the true nature of our perceived ups and downs. They are cyclical, natural, and self-sustaining. They are not a result of gravity and contrarily applied force.... they are a result of centripetal motion. We all are on an ever-turning wheel, and the wheel of our entire lived experience as compared to the default level of conscious awareness in any given present moment - much like the earth itself compared to our physical forms- is so vast that we cannot easily see the curve of it, and cannot automatically feel that it spins. But it is curved, and it does spin, nonetheless. The times that we experience the “ups” of our lives are the times the rotation of the Wheel has brought whatever part of the wheel’s outer ring we are standing upon into an area that promotes optimism, inspiration, lifted spirits, and many other things we associate with desirability in regard to emotions. The times that we experience the “downs” of our lives are the times that same rotation has brought the part of the outer ring we are standing on into an area that naturally brings about sorrow, worry, pessimism, loss, and other things we tend to label as “undesirable” emotions. There is nothing we can do to halt the motion of the Great Wheel, and the attempt at running like a little hamster along the rim of the wheel to try to get through the “bad” parts/to the “good” parts doesn’t help us much either. Not only because the Wheel is so vast and our minds comparatively move too slowly to cover any meaningful distance along it quickly....... but because each of these places the Wheel takes us to as it spins through them is a necessary part of reacting to and fully engaging with Being Alive. Trying to outrun any of them robs us of the opportunity to learn and grow.

How, then, are we supposed to find that sense of Peace and inner Stability that so many of us seek as an essential part of our spiritual paths? If we cannot make the Wheel of Time go faster (or slower), and we cannot change that it will spin its way through all of these emotional places, and we cannot LEAVE the Wheel while still alive....... what possible action could we take that would allow us to be even temporarily untethered from this rollercoaster of unconscious and automated reactions? The answer offered by the section of the paths to enlightenment (encoded in the Major Arcana) that is embodied by The Wheel of Fortune is actually mind-blowingly simple in nature:

Find the part of the Wheel that Does Not Move.

There is one place on the wheel of life that we can reside, and experience all of our life events along with their paramount lessons, and yet still be able to look at them all through a lens not clouded by the all-or-nothing, linear view of an “up” or a “down”. And that place is the Centre about which the entire Wheel turns.

Stepping Into The Centre of the Wheel

Stepping into the centre of the wheel is not something one can just decide to do one day- though certainly some mystical experiences can temporarily jolt a person there abruptly. It is a skill, and one that can require a long and persistent effort to develop. It necessitates the deconstruction of the deeply present-oriented, linearity-based way of thinking that most of us had ingrained in us by society since birth, and the replacement of that outlook with an omni-temporal, cyclical perspective. Luckily, as pagans and [in many cases] witches, our rituals - preformed and kept to, over time- tend to give us a firm basis on which to begin forming this rather different perspective, at least in an abstract way. Recognising the patterns that repeat in the seasons and the movement of earth around the sun and the moon around the earth, and the many other cycles our rites can attune us to is the first level of realisation about the cyclical nature of Things. Taking what we see embodied in the realm of physical Nature and applying it next to society, we can see and recognise bit by bit the patterns that move large groups of people. Finally, through all of that, combined with various methods of personal introspection and contemplation - such as contemplative meditation, journaling, or even counselling (be it with a therapist if you happen to have or want one, or with simply an elder or clergy member of your spiritual community)- we begin to see these cycles played out in the microcosmic scale of our own individual lives.

That final realisation is something that, once Seen, cannot be Unseen. All states are impermanent. All circumstances are ever-shifting. The past is re-interpretable. The future is malleable. The present is ever-moving. When you have internalised these concepts, and come to feel comfortable with them, that is when you can at last take the step into the centre of the wheel. And having done so, you realise that your conceptual knowledge of the cyclical perspective was only a pale echo of experiential understanding that actually finally utilising it brings. It is at this point that you finally can experience the Peace you have perhaps been seeking long and hard along your Path. Not a Peace born of tranquil circumstances, but a Peace that can weather the most wild and howling of storms. This frees you to not only feel less turmoil despite perhaps feeling strong emotions like grief or anger or pain, but also to resultantly think much more clearly about the circumstances that brought about those feelings. In that clarity, solutions abound.

At the beginning of mastering this skill, it can take a semi-ritualised set of actions or a set minimum period of meditation to move your consciousness from the rim of the wheel to its centre. But once it becomes a fully developed skill, it is the thought of merely a moment to shift one’s mind into that state of Observing and Being. The trick is..... that only works if you remember that you have this skill, that this option is available to you. I speak from personal experience when I say that just because you have attained mastery over the skill of shifting your consciousness to this unmoving centre of the ever-spinning human experience, regular reinforcement of this practice is CRUCIAL to being able to ensure that this option is never too out of your reach.