Wheel of Fortune

Notes

1. Just about the whole image is taken from Levi (figure p 173 and a description p 381 of Transcendental Magic and an image from Levi’s Key of the Mysteries, all translated and published in English by Waite). Levi's description says the descending figure is Typhon - usually shown as a crocodile. But Waite/Smith had available an article by Westcott, a recent book by Sir Wallis Budge and a figure in another Levi work - all justifying the representation of Typhon as a serpent.
   
   
2. The illustration in Levi shows signs on the spokes - but not these signs. These signs are (from the top clockwise) mercury, sulphur, water, salt. These are standard Golden Dawn signs (see Regardie, Golden Dawn, p 60).
   
   
3. The 4 beasts are from Revelations 4:7-8 “The first animal was like a lion, the second like a bull, the third animal had a human face, and the fourth animal was like a flying eagle.” A footnote in the Jerusalem Bible states that following Iraeneus the four beasts came to symbolize the four evangelists.
   
   Also relevant is Rev 7:1 “Next I saw four angels, standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the world...” In turn, this imagery comes from Ezekial 1:5-15 which records his vision of the Chariot “I saw what seemed four animals...each had four faces , each had four wings...they had human faces, and all four had a lion’s face to the right and all four had a bull’s face to the left and all four had an eagle’s face...there was a wheel on the ground by each of them...”

Based on original research by Robert V. O'Neill. To add to this collection of information, please email Robert V. O'Neill.

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