This is a Wardi symbolic motif that represents God and the world in totality, and embodies the philosophy of life at large being sustained by perpetual cycles of death and birth, from human and animal life, to the world's seasons, to the sun and moons.
The wheel can be simplified into a basic design of a circle with a cross through it, though this more elaborate form has emerged and become prominent as a confluence of different symbols, and depicts a near-complete cosmological worldview. The full wheel has an outer and inner circle, four suns along the spokes, a lotus at the center, and two connected serpents surrounding it.
The earth wheel is most succinctly a model of the cycles of human life and the seasons, which are reckoned as following the same basic patterns. To this end, it is partially an abstract representation of the solar calendar, which is divided up into two great seasons and subdivided into four suns (months are divided separately as twelve 30-day months and one 5-day intercalary month, and not represented in this symbol).
The season Anaemache starts after the winter solstice on the solar calendar. It is divided into two suns, Inyaweno (the newborn sun after the winter solstice) and Anijinya (the ripening sun after the spring equinox), and Roughly contains the winter and spring seasons. It is the time in which most crops are planted and most rain falls, when most livestock and wild animals give birth, when the earth sees renewal and peak growth, the sun is reborn and the days grow long. On the wheel, it is represented by the dark half of the outer circle, with the color black being partly associated with purity of water, fertile potential, good soil, and feminine qualities.
This season is considered analogous to gestation, birth, childhood, and the cusp of adulthood in the human lifecycle, when the body is young and strong and reaching its prime.
The season Inyamache starts after the summer solstice on the solar calendar. It is divided into two suns, Inyare (the mature, waning sun after the summer solstice) and Tlinya (the dying sun after the autumn equinox), and Roughly contains the summer and autumn seasons. It is the time where most crops are harvested, when most livestock and wild animals breed, little rain falls and plants begin to wither, the days grow shorter and the sun finally dies. On the wheel, it is represented by the light half, with the color white being associated with purity of light, transformation, sunlight, and masculine qualities.
This season is considered analogous to adulthood, procreation, aging, and death in the human life cycle, when a person's purpose shifts to tending the next generation and their body passes out of its prime and nears its end.
This solar calendar-based wheel does not intend to measure the material conditions of the seasons with great accuracy (Inyamache conditions take up more of the year than Anaemache, for one thing), but rather to represent and unify the changes of the sun, earth, and human life under the same philosophical model.
The internal structure of the wheel symbolizes the earth itself and life within. The darkened half in this portion is representative of death and night, the lightened half is birth and day. A lotus motif fills the center, indicative of life itself being perpetually sustained by these cycles, and a representation of God's dead physical body being renewed into a living earth. Lotuses are very central symbols of birth, fertility, and seasonal renewal, and most variants of the creation story describe both God and the first people either emerging Like or As lotuses (the mythical first man Hounyari's name is a compounded 'first of the lotuses').
The spokes represent four great transitional periods of human life, being one's birth, coming of age, procreation, and death. All of these transitions support the movement of the greater wheel and are necessary for the perpetuation of life and of one's people. The spokes also represent the solstices and equinoxes, which can be symbolically compared to these transitional periods (most straightforwardly with the winter solstice and death + the summer solstice + adulthood). They are additionally sometimes framed as representing the cardinal directions, particularly with east and west having birth/death associations respectively due to the daily movements of the sun and the remnants of old beliefs that the afterlife (or its entrance) was located past the western horizon where the sun sets.
The center typically either includes one of the logograms representing God (itself partially consisting of the same earth wheel motif), or just a smaller, simplified wheel. From the wheel-as-God angle, this hub is the deity's soul, the inner circle is Its body/earth, and the outer circle, serpents, or both can represent Its flowing living spirit and perpetual motions. The eating and being eaten form of these vipers can be seen as an angle on the human-God relationship, representing the connectivity between the living spirits of people and God, and the duty of mutual sacrifice to sustain a greater cycle. If the pathway of their interacting bodies is broken, the whole wheel falls apart.
The serpents can alternatively be interpreted as representations of the primordial sea and sky (with God having emerged from their interplay), or more commonly as God in Its pre-creation primordial form As sea and sky in interaction. From the astronomical model standpoint, the two-as-one serpents can also be seen as God as Kusomache (almost always depicted as conjoined or two headed serpents), which governs the movements of the heavens, forms the pathway to the afterlife, and carries human souls into the bodies of infants at birth.
Serpents themselves fall under the category of 'symbols of rebirth', recognized in their ability to shed their skin. The snakes depicted on the earth wheel are usually vipers (most specifically abstractions of the tahamit viper, the most dangerous but also most culturally valued). These are among the animals considered sacred (though on the feared side) in the Wardi worldview, epitomizing death and rebirth via their skin shedding, their ability to give live birth, and the death-dealing qualities of their venom.
