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The Tower

 My daily Tarot card pull this morning was ‘The Tower.’ It’s the 16th card of the Major Arcana and, along with ‘The Devil’, ‘Death’, the Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords and the Nine and Ten of Wands, it tends to make people recoil and shudder, to come over all doom and gloom when it appears in a reading. 


Maybe you can see what I mean? These are the various representations from my five Tarot decks. Lots of destruction, figures falling to the ground, fire, thunder bolts and lightning, very, very frightening me, Galileo Galileo, Galileo Figaro magnificooooo…oops, sorry - went a bit Queen Bohemian Rhapsody there…

It fascinates me how the meaning of a Tarot card can be presented according to the different decks. And this means that interpretations can vary, albeit ever so slightly, according to the deck designer’s intentions. For example, the original Ryder Waite Smith deck:


The Tower itself has been struck and is on fire, but the structure is mainly intact. Is the Tower set on an iceberg? So will the fire melt it, causing destruction to happen also from the bottom upwards? The figures are bailing out in a dramatic way, rather than using the safer route of the stairs. A crown is being toppled, but those clouds have an attractive, rosy pink hue to them, don’t you think? All a bit dramatic though. A sense of lack of control, of matters being out of one’s hands. 

Similarly with this deck:
No option to use the stairs here, though, as the inside of the Tower is on fire. These figures had no choice but to make a speedy exit in order to avoid their Fate. I like the female figure’s tights. I have a similar pair. All is not lost when you have fancy striped tights in your wardrobe. And at least they have some soft grass upon which to land.

This Tower card, from The Wildwood Tarot, has been re-named ‘The Blasted Oak’:


As a reader, I find the images on this one very hard to squeeze some positivity from. Shot from a tree and falling butt-naked into a bottomless ravine in the middle of Winter, with not a ladder in sight? Bloomin’ heck. But it’s an enormous and sturdy oak tree. Very hard to destroy an oak tree of that size. And think of the years and years of wisdom that tree has gathered, the sights it has witnessed. It might have lost a branch, but it still stands solid. So all is not lost in this image of destruction. As Nursey in ‘Blackadder’ would say, ‘There, there. Put some ointment on the branch. It’ll soon grow a new one.’ 

The Osho Zen Tarot deck defines ‘The Tower’ as ‘Thunderbolt’ and offers this image:


To me, it talks about the action of destruction rather than the effects. There is nothing anyone could have done to prevent the destruction - it is a karmic event. Go with it, roll with it. The Tower is presented as a meditating Buddha figure, its chakra centres aflame with the energies triggered by the thunderbolt. The figures seem to be falling at a slower pace than in the other cards, and I feel that they will land safely - the Buddha’s hands will extend and catch them before they smack their heads open on the ground. Faith, then. Trust.

And finally, the card from the deck I used this morning, which was The Everyday Witch Tarot:


Look at the little sparks twinkling around the end of her wand. The little smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. Did she bring about the downfall of the smoking tower before her? Or did she step in when it was falling, deflect the blast and put out the fire? Her hair and clothing are blowing backwards from the effects of the blast, but she is still standing. The top of the Tower, with its vibrant red flag is unharmed, ready to be used again. The witch stands with openness and confidence, like she already has a plan to raise a new Tower to replace the old. The cat hiding under the bush is looking away from the Tower in a different direction. There’s a positive future to be built from this point. 

Tarot decks generally come with a little booklet that gives an explanation for each card according to the deck designer’s intentions. I read these booklets once, but then tend to file them away on my bookshelf. I am an intuitive Tarot reader. It’s a freer and more creative way to give a reading than sticking to the rules of the book. Why rely on someone else’s take on these matters when you could be trusting your own intuitions and using the guidance coming from the Universal energies? I don’t think there is a single, definitive meaning to each of these cards. A theme, maybe, but, like the Tower, nothing is concrete and forever. Life is not set in stone. 

I was jolly pleased to see ‘The Tower’ today because it told me that the difficulties and upsets of the last six months have faded and I have been able to take charge of the resulting fall-out and move forward, leaving the past in the past where it belongs. Life has its losses, and losses mean change. We can get stuck on the losses, we can moan about the changes. Or we can grieve the losses and move on, and make the changes we want for a happier life. If we don’t roll with change we stagnate or we go round and round in circles. It’s the old adage ‘For new to arrive, the old has to go.’ 

‘The Tower’ said to me this morning : Take heart. Be confident. Be calm. You survived this blast. And then some!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Here is to a bright future. 🥂
KJ

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