The Feast of Fortuna

Language is a strange being. There are times when it is a perfect vessel for meaning, delivering our thoughts with the clarity of crystal. And at other times, there are no words at all to land our feelings into the world. We ask a lot of these seed sounds, often forgetting that language itself has been through more than we will ever imagine. I remember a linguistics teacher of mine making an old joke about English. Namely, that it followed French, German, Norse and Latin into a dark alley where it mugged them at sword point. English is the language of appropriation, which is why, in my opinion, it often fails to deliver true clarity.

Let us take a look at this through the lens of our esteemed Goddess of the Season, Lady Fortuna. Her origin story begins long before Rome called her the patron of chance. Fortuna evolved from the older Italian goddess Fors, a deity of fertility, harvest, and the unpredictable cycle of growth. Before civilization took her in, she was simply the force that governed the rise and fall of seasons, life, and human hopes. None of which has a lot to do with “chance” as we consider it today. The Romans later merged her with the Greek Tyche, goddess of civic prosperity, but Fortuna had too many wild Italian edges to truly make the merge. Tyche was a creature of human order; Fortuna was the mistress of nature’s chaos. She represented everything that could not be controlled, and we humans prayed to her to help us along.

Is that lack of control truly the nature of chance? Or does that word not quite live up to the full impact of her efforts?

She was, at times, known as the goddess of “luck”. But that wasn’t quite right. Luck is such a feeble word to describe the vast amounts of “chance” we take every day just by being alive in the world. She expanded to include “fortune”. But that isn’t quite right either, is it? Fortune has too many connotations and is so hard to nail down. What is fortune anyway? This expanded further to include the concept of “fate”. But she simply isn’t the goddess of Fate; she is something else entirely.

Language is too dull a construct to be able to encompass all that Fortuna encloses. She is a goddess of nuance, of trust, an embodied avatar of all human hope. Fortuna reflects back to us the ride we all take every single day we breathe. She is a gut punch of reality with a soft hand back to our feet. Fortuna shows us what we already know deep down in our animal core. Life is dangerous. It is a storm of chaos. It is a gamble we make simply by waking up and participating. Everything is unpredictable and every attempt we make to impose order on the nature of life is an effort thrown to the wind. Life goes up; Life goes down. You can either close your eyes and scream, or you can accept that very nature and learn to trust the ride.

Fortuna is more than luck, fortune or fate. She is the trust we show when we accept that the wheel goes up and the wheel goes down and that no matter where we are on that wheel, it will continue to do what it does. What we ask her for is not control of our ride, but for the understanding that at some point--an utterly unpredictable point-- it is all going to turn out for the best. This wheel does more than just turn, it weaves. Her wheel in particular, the Rota Fortunae, is a concept central to mystic practices and represents the constant flux of human existence. It is a profound teaching about impermanence and creation. The wheel turns for everyone. Those at the top will descend. Those at the bottom will rise. No position is permanent, nothing is fixed. In other words (to steal from the Buddhists): Don’t worry, nothing is permanent.

To fully inhabit this reality, and to reap the fruits of it, is to accept that prosperity and hardship are both temporary states. The Rota teaches us that clinging to success breeds suffering, just as despair in failure misses the inevitable turn. Fortuna invites us to hold both triumph and loss lightly, to understand that we’re always in motion between these axes. It always works out in the end, mostly because there is no end.

Why is she worshipped if not for luck? Because nobody, not even the most disciplined among us, can control everything. Life is chaos, and if we try to stifle that, it rises up in unpredictable ways. Fortuna represents the part of existence that will not be domesticated. The part that shrugs off order and laughs. Fortuna is an avatar who shows up when we acknowledge that the spaces between “good” and “bad” are neither good nor bad, but rather a condition of the inherent chaos of the living. Nothing about this up down ride is a moral judgment. It simply is.

So we ask for a little push towards the good. We ask the hand of fate to swing that wheel upward for us. We ask Fortuna to shift the wind in our favour now and again, fully understanding that if we do this enough times, we arrive at the place where we no longer have to ask. We have accepted the wheel, and Fortuna takes us for the proper ride. At the core of it, Fortuna teaches surrender, but not the passive kind. She teaches active surrender, the surrender of releasing control while maintaining focus on the divine timing of things. This is the surrender of recognizing that when you are down it isn’t the end. That delay may be protection. That no may be a win. That loss may be a clearing of space. That build-up may herald the break-down. She teaches the spiritual technology of flow so that we can move with change rather than resist it, and accept the gifts hidden in the not knowing.

Her symbols demonstrate this, and give you footholds into her ever moving cycle.

She is often depicted with a cornucopia, the horn of plenty, symbolizing the flow of abundance. This is not the abundance one finds through the hands of hard work and struggle, although that has its place. This is the abundance of natural circulation--the abundance of the earth and of water. This is abundance that is all around you and comes to you freely when you don’t grasp at it. It’s the abundance of giving and receiving and of trust that what you need will come when you need it. The cornucopia pours forth endlessly because you aren’t trying to keep it full or hoard its plenty.

Fortuna is blindfolded, demonstrating that trust. She knows the cornucopia will be full because it must be so. That is its nature. If it isn’t full it is because it is not time for it to be so. Just as you do not expect the earth to yield bounty in winter, but you accept that it will do so in summer. That level of trust and understanding must cross the board of your life.

Fortuna is also depicted with a rudder, representing the ability to navigate life’s cycles even amid uncertainty. This is the paradox she holds. We cannot control the wind, but we can adjust the sail. We cannot stop the wheel from turning, but we can choose how we ride it. This is how we balance the ups and downs of life. We ride with grace through humility in success and courage in adversity. This rudder is a powerful symbol that reminds us that we participate with life in the ways that we can. We steer where we can and surrender where we cannot.

She was worshipped everywhere in Rome. There were Fortunas for every stage of life. Fortuna Primigenia for birth, Fortuna Virilis for adulthood, Fortuna Redux for safe return, Fortuna Muliebris for married women, even Fortuna Balnearis for bath time. The Romans didn’t believe in a one-size goddess; they believed Fortuna had many faces because the unknown--chance-- touches every corner of life. This multiplicity teaches us that fortune operates at every level. There is the grand sweep of destiny and the small luck of daily life. There is fortune in the big decisions and fortune in whether you catch the bus. She’s present in birth and in death, in love and loss, in mundane moments and life-changing crossroads. No aspect of existence is outside her sphere, and she has handed you the tools to navigate with her, or to let her take the wheel completely.

To accept Fortuna is to accept that there is a rhythm to chance or fate or luck. To life.

She brings turning points. She brings sudden openings. She brings opportunities to co-create with the forces larger than us. And most importantly, she brings momentum. When Fortuna spins her wheel, she reminds you that nothing (good or bad) stays fixed. Her gift is movement, change, bounty and faith. When you follow Fortuna, you learn to read the signs of change. You can sense when the wind is about to shift in your life, or when chaos is merely the opening bars to a symphony of opportunity. She shows you how to shift your perspective, so that you can really feel that what seems like terrible luck in the moment may be the best thing that ever happened to you. She trains us in the long view, in trusting the pattern we cannot yet see.

In many ways, to follow Fortuna is to grow into spiritual maturity. That urge to control is counter to the very nature of life. That same urge can stifle the creativity you need to work with your life. Knowing when to hold and when to let go, when to steer and when to flow, is one of the spirit path’s greatest lessons. The worst thing you can ever do is to let yourself get fixed. That is Fortuna’s great truth: nothing is fixed. Nothing is final. Nothing is truly under control. But, when nothing is permanent, nothing is hopeless. When everything moves, everything is possible. We can call this fate, or we can call it luck. Maybe it is a great fortune, being able to take the ride with trust and joy. But whatever language you wish to use, know this.

Fortuna is forever there with her hand on the wheel. Let it be and raise a glass. You can find her full feast here. And the Ritual ingredients here.