There are few cards in the tarot that bring up more fear than the Tower card.
In the Rider Waite Smith deck the Tower is portrayed as a tall stone building, erected on top of a craggy mountain, mid-lightning strike. Figures fall face first from the structure. The lightning dislodges a large crown from the peak of the building. There’s fire in the air. The sky is dark, ominous, pressing.
Everything about this image screams change, destruction, and death. There’s no wonder it often elicits a gasp of repulsion when it shows up.
We don’t need to approach this card with fear. Healthy respect? Yeah, for sure. Fear? Not so much.
(Cause babe, you got this.)
I’m not going to lie, Tower experiences are fucking difficult, without fail. To say otherwise would be pretty bypassy, and we don’t need that kind of energy here. They’re also highly kinetic and illuminating. Though they may not feel illuminating in the moment. Usually, quite the opposite.
Take a look at the imagery Pamela Colman has used for this card. A tower. On a remote mountain. Topped by a crown. All of these elements indicate hierarchies and isolation. You know the saying “It’s lonely at the top”? This card speaks to a structure that’s been put in place (usually unconsciously by you, dear reader) that serves to isolate you from, well, yourself.
These kinds of structures are inherently unsustainable. Let’s look at this through the lens of shamanic practices. There’s this idea in core shamanism that pieces of your soul can be separated from your body. Generally, this occurs due to a trauma of some kind (big or little T). A piece of the soul breaks off as a means of protection, in order to guard against being damaged by that trauma.
This same idea is found in Parts Work, and Integrated Family Systems therapy. When we encounter trauma, we split into pieces. Some of those pieces take up arms to serve as protectors. Other pieces (such as the inner child) go into hiding to prevent further damage.
This is amazing.
We’re amazing creatures! This kind of defense mechanism helps keep up safe during harrowing times.
I know it can be tempting to beat ourselves up for these kinds of responses. But without them we’d all be a lot more messed up than we are now.
And that’s saying something.
However, living life with a fractured soul becomes increasingly difficult over time. This can manifest in self-destructive tendencies, depression, and addition.
Things that run counter to the healthy, joyful life we want to experience.
How does this relate to the Tower? Think of it this way- those parts of yourself that went into hiding, went into this tower. Those figures falling through the sky, they’re the protectors. Now, we don’t want those figures to die. It’s important to have their energy within us when we need it. But they need to leave the place of ultimate power. There are many ways to do that.
In the case of the Tower, we get a major wake-up call that reorganizes the power structure.
There is nothing subtle or gentle about lightning destroying a building. The experience of The Tower is traumatic. But it’s the trauma that comes with some hidden truth being revealed. Usually something we don’t want to face, due to the pain it can cause us.
I’ll give you an example from my life. A few years ago, my mother’s partner died unexpectedly. The impact of that moment sent shockwaves through the whole family. I immediately flew cross-country to support my mom through the weeks following his death.
That experience revealed a lot to me about the inner dynamics of my family.
Things I’d known on a deeper level, but that I hadn’t been willing to face. I hadn’t wanted to face those things because they were crazy painful. These realizations eventually resulted in me making difficult decisions about my relationship with my family.
Now, having gone through all of the processing that comes through the journey from the Tower to The Sun (and beyond) I’m in a better place with my mental health than ever. I have more fulfilling relationships. I’m even in a better place financially. Would that have happened without that specific experience?
I think yes.
Had my mother’s partner not died, or had I not accepted the invitation to see more clearly in the aftermath of his death, the Universe would have just sent me another Tower experience to live through. Likely something even more intense. From what I’ve seen, that’s kind of how it works. We get the lesson until we learn the lesson.
And if we’re not listening, the Universe will just yell louder.
Those messages come through in all sorts of ways. It may be the death of a loved one, a divorce, a betrayal, a car accident or an illness. The thing is, we’re not victims to these situations, and we didn’t “bring them on ourselves”. We are deeply responsible for how we move through them, and what we take from them.
The Tower is an opportunity to see, really clearly, what unstable foundations we’ve built our lives upon. It does that by fucking with those foundations.
This can be really hard to appreciate in the midst of a Tower experience.
That’s fine. You don’t have to! That’s not the work here.
The work is to be open to the experience and embrace it, as much as you can at any given moment. In those times when you can’t, when you feel like railing against the world and screaming at the injustice of it all, I urge you to let that flow, too. It’s important to move that energy through you, and not let it get stuck.
It’s when energy gets stuck that we run the risk of further splintering ourselves, causing deeper trauma and disintegration.
In Shamanic practices, there is a process called soul retrieval. This can be approached with or without the aid of plant medicine. Essentially, the practitioner sits with the person in need of retrieval. They go into a state of altered consciousness (the alpha state), and journeys into another plane. There, they seek out a part of the soul that broke off and went into hiding. Once found, the practitioner can escort that part back home.
It’s not an easy process for the person looking for integration. Often, bringing back that soul part results in a lot of tears and processing. It is possible to unearth repressed memories, and requires guidance afterward for true integration. Usually, this process takes place over weeks or months.
The Tower card can uncover a need for this kind of reintegration. It can also uncover the root of that need, if we’re willing to listen. That is the journey that unfolds after the Tower, through The Star, The Moon, and finally into The Sun.
When The Tower comes up in a reading, don’t recoil. There’s a strong chance that some structure you’ve counted on–that’s built on faulty foundations–is about to be upended.
It may be painful. It may downright suck for a while. And it is all, essentially and inherently, there for your growth.
I offer you this prayer for when you encounter The Tower. Use it as is, change it, or simply find inspiration from it. Whatever works for you.
“God of my understanding, make me ready. Give me the strength to lean in to what you reveal, and the softness to embrace the parts of me that hurt. Grant me the vision to see into the darkness, and the wisdom to know that light will return. Give me the courage to change what I must in order to come closer to you, and closer to myself.”