ARCANALOGUE: "...Evolving Beats Revolving Any Day."

Today I rescued this sundew plant from my local corner florist. At first I thought the display was full of mostly-dead Venus flytraps, but on closer inspection they were actually mostly-dead sundews (or "OCTOPUS PLANT!", as the packaging screams). I mentioned to the florist that they'd probably all finish dying unless he put them under glass so they could stay humid; he nodded in agreement and said I was probably right, though he didn't seem particularly concerned about it. I picked the hardiest-looking one and brought it home to my carnivorous plant ICU.

That's right, the sundew eats bugs. Its leaves are covered with all these little glands which emit a sweet mucilagenous liquid that looks like dew. When an insect lands, it gets all gummed up and can't free itself. That's when the leaf begins to move like a tentacle, ensuring that as many palps as possible caress the struggling bug. Once it's been wrapped up and smothered in dew, the plant secretes enzymes that dissolve and digest it. It sounds messy, but the plant is quite an elegant specimen. It's wheel-like in its radial symmetry, and each new leaf unfurls in a perfect spiral -- an illustration from the ancient, as-yet-decrypted Voynich manuscript is thought to depict a sundew. All told, there are less glamorous ways for a bug to die.

The allusion to the Fortune card above (or the Wheel of Fortune, as it's often called) may not be terribly clear on the surface, something about the plant's outstretched rays and the ambivalent beauty of its life cycle struck a chord in me. The Alchemical deck paints the card as a cycle of endless devouring, and even in earlier traditional decks such as the Visconti there seems to be elements of bondage. Are we clinging to the Wheel, or is it clinging to us? Once engaged, are we able to free ourselves? Is this cycle of ascending, peaking, descending, and bottoming out a natural process? Did we invent or discover it -- or has it been thrust upon us? All of these are questions to ponder as we spin.

In mythology, the Fates have always been characterized as possessing the utter ambivalence befitting any natural or cosmological force. Robert M. Place reminds us that in Plato's Republic, the Fates are literally the daughters of Necessity, and that the "wheel" in question is the spindle of the cosmos. He also points out that the card contains a clear reference to the idea of reincarnation, which may not have sat well with the Church -- he posits that the figure stuck at the bottom of the wheel (representing death) may have been white-washed out of the picture to make the card less blasphemous. By the time the Marseilles deck was rolled out, the theme of reincarnation had been muted considerably. In Hinduism it's taught that we constantly repeat this wheel of birth and rebirth, ignorant of the true nature of our existance, until we are finally able to transcend the cycle.

In the Tarot, the Fortune card indicates that the matter in question is out of your hands, and that for better or worse you're basically along for the ride. Don't waste time struggling to avoid control of the situation -- instead, you can engage it and gamble based on your knowledge of the natural order of things. Some people read this card as an omen that the results will work out in your favor, that you'll be lucky. I think that's too simple. If you look at our aphorisms about luck, we hear "Fortune favors the bold," or that you need to "make your own luck." I think that this extra layer of self-awareness is especially important to add when reading this card. Anyone can just passively ride the wheel in dizzy circles; by lifting your focus beyond the game, you may be able to influence it. Sorry, luck is not trying to find you -- but if perhaps you can find it.

Think about that as you browse the Galleria Carnivora, an online gallery devoted to photography of insectivorous plants. Just as weeds like the sundew have perfectly evolved to ensnare prey, other species have evolved to change the game in their own favor. Check out the video below to see how a certain crab spider makes an easy living off of the pitcher plant's mindless labor. When it comes to facing the hardships of life, evolving beats revolving any day.