THE NATURE OF THE FORTUNES
If any reader of this blog has a lead on what medieval manuscript Fontaine could’ve extracted this ‘Golden Wheel’ from, I’m all-ears and eyeballs. Though the cover of the book depicts a man in a tobacco-induced reverie, given the nature of this divination tool, my sense is it was more-designed to appeal to females. Each number of the wheel has a different fortune connected to it (see PDF further down the page. In my analysis of the nature of the 100 fortunes accompanying this wheel, 33 are predictions about what sort of marital partner and home life with same the chooser will enjoy, another 14 addressed the issue of lovers, another 9 were predictions about enemies or rivals, and two predicted old-maidhood or old-bachelorhood for the choosers of those numbers. The remaining 42 fortunes were of a more general nature, saying what will happen to the inquirer in the future, or either confirming or discouraging their existing plans.
In both medieval times and the nineteenth century, society assumed the vast majority of people would marry, so it was of the greatest importance who one married. The unmarried were considered ‘pitiable’ and possibly defective. Given this reality, it’s not surprising so many of the fortunes dealt with future marriages. There’s often a moralizing or a definitively-predictive tone to the fortunes, which seems to be a hallmark of a nineteenth century divination tool; moralizing in print was more accepted then. We live in a day and age where living together is acceptable, remaining single one’s whole life is acceptable, having a child outside of marriage isn’t quite the scandal it once was, gays and lesbians can be openly married to each other without having to go through the societally-dictated farce of being married to a member of the opposite sex, and marriage is more a question than an answer, being just one life-option of several.
But there will always be people who genuinely want to know what sort of spouse they will have, what sort of marriage and family life they will enjoy, are children in the picture, and if so, what will become of them, is their lover true, do they have enemies, and what do they do about them. For such people, this wheel might yet have some value.
Love this – such a beautiful wheel! I would interpret ” ‘should I go ahead with my plans?’ or ‘do I have any enemies?’, only to choose the answer ‘you will have a handsome, young, and wealthy man for your partner.’ ” by shifting my focus a little and looking at what a handsome, young and wealthy man symbolises. He sounds wholesome right? So it looks good, but handsome young men are often not mature enough to handle their wealth. So it’s a cautionary path to success, go ahead by all means, there’s a good chance of success, but beware the pitfalls caused by naivety and overconfidence. I used to have real problems finding these sorts of canned answer oracles useful, but since I started working with the European cartomancy decks I just seem to be able to refocus the answer to just about any question by breaking it down that way. Lots of fun!
Good point! I think you’re right about having to shift one’s focus and considering what a pre-set image in a divination tool symbolizes for oneself personally. This is particularly important if you’re dealing with an old divination tool from an earlier century, where they had a slightly-different outlook on life. It doesn’t mean the divination tool in question has nothing of value to say to us, but we may need to adapt or reinterpret the answer.