My apologies, have edited post to correct.jmd wrote:Just so as to give due credit where due credit it due... it was not I, but OP who said:OnePotato wrote:[...]In Europe the sphinx is a symbol for wisdom.
If you want that at the top of your wheel of fortune, I guess you can ignore what I said above.
Depending upon when and by whom (do you have any period appropriate examples?) I would guess an association of the sphinx with wisdom and understanding would be more cognate with the appearance of the sphinx on the Pope card, unless such represents alternatively the triumph of Christianity over pagan ignorance and folly. Any association with wisdom is irrelevant to its placement atop the wheel of fortune, whereupon her association with folly and ignorance, or as the bitch presiding o'er days of ill fortune about to be toppled and overthrown, or as a general symbols of reversals in fortune, are the more cognate (and I think probably the more common for the time). She also came to represent hieroglyphs and their decipherment, in the tradition of Chaeremon and as popularised by Kircher (via the patronage of a series of Popes among many others - Kircher being a master of the patronage game).jmd wrote:The sphinx indeed has also been linked to understanding and prudence (hence 'wisdom') when considered in connection with its riddle, but I would not link it to Wisdom even if it was a sphinx intended on the Tarot de Marseille-II.
SteveM
“Egyptian wisdom is to say all things symbolically, to conceal the images of the gods in littles boxes and to hang from walls only the Sphinx.” Chaeremon of Alexandra, 1st century AD