Let’s talk about another one of the tarot’s BigBadBehometh cards. OH NO! THE TOWER IS FALLING!
Today’s card is the Tower. In Frank Fradella’s Adventure Tarot, you see a tall tower that reaches far up into the sky. It has been struck by lightning and the top portion is crumbling beneath that electrical attack. The lightning is coming in from the top right hand corner. The tower itself is a gold and glass skyscraper that juts up far above the rest of the city beneath it.
If you focus on this card, it is hard to say if this is actually lightning coming down or if the lightning is streaming from within the tower. Has the tower been blown up by a simple act of nature or is it being blown up from inside? There are people jumping but they are so simplistic that they are merely stick figures… X’s falling from the sky. I count seven of them if I look closely.
Consider this for yourself when the Tower shows up in your life. Where is the destructive, life-changing energy coming from? Can you control it or direct it or do you simply need to duck and cover until it is over? Who else will be affected by your Tower moment? Can you afford to expend that energy if this is something you have control over? This is your rude awakening moment when you find out that there was a reason you weren’t shining a light into all your dark corners. Don’t be fooled. This card is showing up in your life to shake you up, down and sideways. But how you deal with it is your reward or your punishment. Only you can make that call.
What if I told you that the Tower can represent the false you? The you that you have created for others to see? What if I told you that a Tower moment meant you were going to have to watch the false you be shattered into a million pieces leaving only the real you bare and exposed for the world to see? Scary, huh.
In the Ancestral Path Tarot, the Tower is an odd juxtaposition of the implacable sphinx in the foreground. Behind what looks to me like the library of Alexandria goes up in a shower of stone from a lightning bolt. This card disturbs me more than some other Tower cards because the sphinx makes me want to scream, “Didn’t you pay attention to the wisdom given you before?” And I know first hand that advice given is far easier than advice received.
Normally, when the Tower shows up in a reading for me, I warn the querent that something drastic is going to happen in their lives. Usually, this is an event that you just can’t prepare for. There is no way to truly predict when, where, how and who the Tower will strike. The best we can do is hope that our disaster preparedness plan is in place. Mars rules this card making it a card of war. This is a war on reality or what you see as real. Remember even though this is painful, you will have new ground to build upon. That is the real secret of the Tower. How you deal with it is your own growth opportunity.
In the Animals Divine Tarot, we see Thunderbirds bringing the Tower down. I am not a huge fan of this representation of the Tower because I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the destructive energy of the Tower being represented by these beautiful birds Hunt has depicted as eagles. Then I realize that sometimes nature in and of itself is an uncaring destroyer of life. So perhaps the idea of the Thunderbirds striking without warning does make a good Tower. What do you think?
What do Tower moments mean to you? If it means terrible things, I suggest you read “Who Moved My Cheese”, by Dr. Spencer Johnson & Kenneth H. Blanchard.
“In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change. Eventually, one of them deals with change successfully, and writes what he has learned from his experience on the maze walls. When you come to see “The Handwriting on the Wall” you can discover for yourself how to deal with change, so that you can enjoy more success and less stress (however you define it) in your work and in your life.” From Who Moved My Cheese.com
Tower moments happen. No one can tell me that they have never had a Tower moment in their life unless perhaps they are under the age of fifteen or so. And even then, the Tower moments happened–they just may not seem as bad to our adult selves. Consider your life. Where has the Tower crumbled for you? How did you move past it? How did you utilize the clear ground once the rubble of the Tower was cleared?
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As much as I hate to see the Tower appear for me at times, I always come around to somehow appreciating what has happened, even if it might take some time to recover from it. After more than one Tower experience last year, I realized that I walked away from that period of time feeling stronger… I’m still a little rough around the edges, but not as much as I was. I’ve drawn the Three of Swords several times in the past few weeks – the last time when I was in the middle of a conversation that suddenly left me without a friend (fall all of three days, it turns out). I felt depressed, but it also left me feeling that the right thing had happened – I wasn’t going to cling to someone (not anymore).
I have a friend who *loves* the Tower card. I’ll have to look up her post about it, and print it off for my journal.
This is such a true thing, Angela! And it’s hard to realize that our growth has lost us friends, but maybe they weren’t the best friends for us in the first place, eh?