The Wheel of Time | AI Thumbnails

Continuing on the ‘Oracles’ explorations for ‘The Thousand Arms’.

This week’s time goes to ‘The Wheel of time’. Yippee!

Overall, there are some concepts that already make sense in terms of shape design. But my habit of completely changing the description of what the card originally signifies through its symbols might be hurting their representation. Which is why I have been thinking of redoing the thumbnails, for all of them, using more accurate prompts to see what comes out.

Since I use Google Collab to run these scripts, I think moving to Stable Diffusion might also be an option, though I am wondering is I need the output to be so on point. It’s too accurate. I like Disco Diffusion because the output is much more abstract. And that works better for me I think. Still. I’ll try it out over the next few weeks and decide what I like more.

‘The Wheel of Fortune’ as found on Labyrinthos

The Wheel of Fortune is one of the most highly symbolic cards in the deck, filled with signs that each have its own meaning. At the center of the card, lies a giant wheel, covered in esoteric symbols. There are different creatures that surround the wheel; the angel, the eagle, the bull and the lion. They are related to four fixed signs in the zodiac – leo, taurus, scorpio and aquarius.

The books that each of the creatures hold represents the Torah which communicates wisdom and self-understanding. The snake indicates the act of descending into material world. On the wheel itself, rides a sphinx that sits at the top, and what appears to be either a devil, or Anubis himself arising at the bottom. These two Egyptian figures are representative of both the wisdom of the gods and kings (in the case of the sphinx) and the underworld (Anubis). They are rotating forever, in a cycle, and suggests that as one comes up, the other goes down.

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I don’t think I like this description much. It is too western, obviously.

In oriental philosophy I believe it signifies a wheel turned by a deity; and symbolises chance and the eternal truth. That all things are spontaneous. Let’s see if I can spin the wheel and take these thumbnails further 🙂