Wheel of Fortune: Life had been good to Ganymede. Not only was he born a prince of Troy, with money, position and a nifty title, but (according to Homer) he also had the best looks in Asia Minor. He probably thought he had it made, with life having provided him a cushion for every possible sling and arrow. Then one day out of the blue, a huge eagle swooped down, snatched him up and flew off. Okay, except that one.
On the plus side, the eagle didn’t want him for dinner. On the down side, it had been sent by randy old Zeus, king of the gods, who’d decided that Ganymede was much too attractive to be left to rot on Earth. He had him brought to Olympus and made him his new “cup bearer.” Now, we know how Hera, Zeus’s longsuffering wife, felt about having yet another pretty euphemism hanging around her husband. We can guess how Hebe, the previous holder of the cup bearer job, felt about getting kicked out. We can say for certain that Ganymede’s father was seriously pissed-off, because Zeus had to placate him with a couple heavenly horses for cavalierly making off with his son like that. What nobody bothered to record are the thoughts of Ganymede himself.
He was probably of two minds: immortality and eternal youth (which went with the office) vs. putting up with Zeus’s affections and Hera’s simmering resentment. Sort of a toss-up, really, which is what the Wheel of Fortune card usually signifies. Chance, fate, luck, whatever you want to call it, is coming at you at high speed. Will it be good luck or bad? That may depend on how you choose to look at it. You may get that promotion, but be forced to work longer hours; you might get the girl, only to find out that her mother is a nightmare. Luck is usually like that, bringing some good with the bad and vice versa. But, either way, things are about to get a lot more interesting.
Wheel of Fortune reversed: Luck is often viewed as something over which we poor mortals have no control. You are either dealt a winning hand or you aren’t, the feeling goes. But, really, there’s a little more to it than that.
Consider the fate of Tithonius. Like his brother Ganymede, shown here on our card, he drew the attention of a deity. Unlike Ganymede, it wasn’t Zeus who was interested but the Titan Eos, goddess of dawn. She asked Zeus to make her new boy toy immortal, as he had Ganymede. But while Zeus was willing to bend a rule where his own pleasure was concerned, he was less than thrilled about doing it for another’s–especially when it might set a dangerous precedent. Pretty soon, every petty god in the pantheon was going to want a favorite dalliance made eternal, thereby cluttering up Olympus and eroding the already tenuous difference between humans and the gods. But saying no would look bad, considering his own newly immortal cup bearer. So Zeus got crafty.
He granted Eos’s request for immortality for Tithonius, but neglected to add the bit about eternal youth. As a result, poor Tithonius aged and aged and, well, aged. Eos took care of him for centuries, but when he finally shrank down to the size of a cricket, she decided enough was enough. Zeus wouldn’t let Tithonius die, probably because his eternal suffering was serving as a nice deterrent to other immortality requests, so Eos took him back down to earth and released him. We don’t know for certain, but it’s likely that the once handsome, immortal consort of a goddess ended up as lunch for a passing seagull.
The moral: luck often needs a helping hand. Eos and Tithonius might have remembered with whom, exactly, they were dealing and thought things out a little better. Instead of immortality, they could have requested the same gift Zeus had bestowed on Ganymede, which would have included the non-aging clause. Similarly, if you want to win that poker game, it might be a good idea to take a few lessons before challenging a master.