Regnabo
I shall reign
The climb. Fortune's hand cups your back and lifts you toward a crown not yet yours — savour the ascent, for the summit is narrower than it looks.
Medieval Divination Engine
Turn the wheel.
Meet your lot.
The wheel on folio 1r of the Codex Buranus carries four figures around a crowned Fortuna: one climbing, one enthroned, one pitched off, one crushed beneath the axle. Each is labelled. Grasp the rim, heave, and let momentum carry you past all four.
Fortune declares
Rota volvitur
The wheel awaits a hand
Grasp the gilded rim and cast it. Whichever of the four scrolls stops beneath the pointer is read aloud.
Grab & fling · drag with pointer or touch
Quattuor Fata
Four estates, one turning.
The four labels are written on scrolls issuing from the figures’ mouths, in the future, present, perfect and privative: regnabo, regno, regnavi, sum sine regno. The grammar is the whole argument.
Regno
I reign
The crown sits. You hold the high seat and the whole court turns to your word — but a wheel at its zenith has only one way left to travel.
Regnavi
I have reigned
The descent. Robes slip, courtiers thin, and what you gripped tightest runs out through open fingers — grace lies in falling well.
Sum sine regno
I am without reign
The mire beneath the axle. Stripped, unseated, forgotten by the throng — yet from the floor of the wheel every single turn is a rising.
Ritus Rotae
The rite of the turning.
Three motions. The wheel keeps whatever speed your hand gives it and settles where friction leaves it — the harder the cast, the longer the reading takes to resolve.
I
Grip the rim
Take hold of the outer gold anywhere it pleases you. Press the pointer down, or simply lay a finger against the wheel — the axle wakes at a touch.
II
Cast it spinning
Sweep your hand and release. The wheel keeps the speed you gave it, clattering past each fate under its own momentum — a timid push earns a timid turn.
III
Read the rest
Let it slow and settle. When the pointer stops, the estate beneath it is declared aloud in the reading. Turn again as often as your nerve allows.
Chronica Sortium
A ledger of your turns.
Every spin is recorded here as it lands. Watch which estate the wheel favours you with — over enough turns, the four fates find their balance.
Regnabo0
Regno0
Regnavi0
Sum sine regno0
The wheel has turned0×
- No turns yet. Cast the wheel to begin the chronicle.
“O Fortuna, velut luna statu variabilis.”
O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it.
Carmina Burana · Codex Buranus, c. 1230