Let me propose you all - a "game".

Oh, Fulgour... Love is the answer... eh eh.

Silvia

Arcane X. La Rue de Fortune. The illusion of change, the illusion of time and linearity, the illusion of “chance or choice”.

You don’t have to live in the exterior circle. Focus on the unmovable centre, where all movement is produced. Being unmovable, the centre is not inert; it is the very source of life. On the contrary, the outward mobility of the wheel is but imitation of life.

Too much agitation is the prestidigitator’s trick.
Absolute stillness is the inexperienced observer’s mistake.
Life lies in between.

punchinella said:

The arc of Cupid's arrow is the rod from which this veil is thrown, obscuring vision and clouding judgment.

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So, Punchinella, “romantic” love is the illusion. And “motherly” love, and “brotherly” love, and all kind of love that is not… Love?

Interesting to see Love as the answer and love as the riddle. You made me think about the young man in Valet de Coupes. A veil dances before his eyes, obscuring the sight of the cup he bears.

Silvia

smleite said:

Arcane X. La Rue de Fortune. The illusion of change, the illusion of time and linearity, the illusion of “chance or choice”.

...

Too much agitation is the prestidigitator’s trick.
Absolute stillness is the inexperienced observer’s mistake.
Life lies in between.

Click to expand...

This reminds me of one of the images of the Tao - that of the spaces between the spokes of a wheel. The emptiness that fills the spaces, like the emptiness of the cup, so different from the solid fullness of coins, and swords, and staffs. Perhaps, when the Papesse's veil is removed, we see we belong not in the still unchanging centre, and not on the busy boom-and-bust wheel with the other monkeys, but in the spaces in between the spokes. Perhaps that is the only place we can reach Wholeness - for who can remain separate who has to move, and yet not move, who takes in the emptiness of space and unites with it, at one with the nothing - and yet joined with the still centre of meditation, and the careering outer rim of La Roue's busy samsara?

And if we look at the origin of La Roue - the infamous instrument of torture - wouldn't a man placed on it - flattened on it, whirled round beyond sickness into crazed agony - feel the spaces most acutely? And at the same time, the blessed relief of air between the spokes, stroking his back!

Free Will

And yet the odd contraption we see labled as
La Roue de Fortune
would collapse or fall at the touch of a hand.

Is this the wheel of Dame Fortune or a mockery,
an indictment of the doctrine of predestination.
See the badminton dolls and the puppet king,
the unfixed axel, missing spokes, half-frame...

Fulgour said:

And yet the odd contraption we see labled as
La Roue de Fortune
would collapse or fall at the touch of a hand.

Click to expand...

Extremely odd! On that strange water-like surface, the wheel floats. Is it our unstable home, or a mockery of our fears? You suggest the image attacks the idea that we are predestined, that Dame Fortuna has decided all ahead of time. We are free, the wheel shows, to monkey about. And yet...Fortuna is just as capricious as any god. She might not keep the Predestination Book of the Calvinists, but she will spin and stop her useless wheel as she pleases. We map our own way, but are limited by our birth, our death, and various other external or internal circumstances not of our choosing (wars, earthquakes, where we were born, the parents we have, our aptitude for this or that mode of expression, illness). Isn't that strange inapt wheel the grotesque picture of those events that catch us in our fondest loves, or dearest ambitions?

The wheel turns - wobbles, ungainly - here you lose your beloved, there, you inherit her money. Yet still you are not predestined. How will you mourn? Will her death bring you closer or further away from your fellows? Will you recover with a sense of blessing for having known her or morbidly remain attached for decades, fetishising her memory? What will you do with her money? Build a mausoleum in her memory? Give it to charity (yet she wanted you to have it)? Go away on vacation where you will meet someone else? Buy yourself a few months in Paris and shoot art videos?

That odd wheel is not ugly or frightening, though. It looks like a rejected cartwheel painted to look like fair-ground wheel, it reassures us, perhaps, that life is after all nothing but a merry-go-round, that we have one go on it, we won't survive it, so we might as well enjoy it. It offers both an exhilaration and a torture.

Lifting the veil on La Roue entails living with that silly-looking wheel. Living with the limits, and still building our lives as though we had no limits, not minding what the other monkeys are doing, falling, climbing, one day king, the next, beggar - except that you might want to offer help to the beggar, and the king might help you. Finding an infinite space of freedom in the gaps between the spokes, which are wide, and look far more supportive than the wheel itself.