I mentioned in a previous entry the earliest Wheel of Fortune I have found so far was this very wheel. In the interests of showing both an historical artifact, and how divination tools can change over time, I decided to run this as a special feature. Whether you want to actually use it is of course, up to you. We have just passed Valentine’s Day at the time of this writing, and given the romantic nature of many of its fortunes, it might’ve made for a nice Valentine’s Day diversion, but there’s always next year.

A LITTLE HISTORY

 It first appeared in Fontaine’s Golden Wheel Fortune Teller and Dream Book, published in 1862 by Dick & Fitzgerald, New York. Fontaine recounts, “This singular wheel was much consulted in the middle ages and is said to have been used by Cagliostro to aid him in his divinations. I have selected it from an old Latin manuscript on Astrology, and translated it into English for the benefit of my readers who cannot read the former language,” I was dubious about this claimed antecedent, but the yes-and-no stones confirmed that Fontaine indeed obtained this Wheel from a medieval manuscript, that he didn’t need to make any significant alterations to it, in order to make it relevant to his nineteenth-century readers. Also no, the eighteenth-century occultist Cagliostro didn’t use it to aid him in his divinations. Color me surprised; I assumed he’d made it all up.