Murals in my garden – wheel of fortune

The starting point to this work was a wooden wheel I got as a present from my friend Maria, who was leaving Arusha for Germany. I fixed it to the wall and started painting.

The wheel in the tarot card ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ represents the continuous moving of the flowing universe and the stream of human life. The sphinx on the top is balancing the opposites between god of evil, Typhon, the snake pointing down, and Anubis, rising on the right side, a symbol of intelligence and wisdom. The sphinx also stands for life’s riddles. The outer circle represents the material world.

This is one of the few cards in the major arcana that does not have a human figure as a focal point. This is because its centre is above the realm of man – in the higher levels (clouds) where the destinies of all are woven together in the tapestry of life. Tarot recognises that each person sets their own path in life, but is also subject to the larger cycles that include them. We experience chance events that appear to be accidents although they are part of the great plan.

What is important to me is that we can either “get at the world” or “the world gets at us” and that there is always a point of decision.