This is a card of…

Catastrophe

Collapse

Harsh reality

Truth

Rebirth

“It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised.”

-Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

In Key 16 we see a powerful lightning strike crack the top off of a stone tower, the occupants are blasted out of the structure and falling to the ground below. Those falling might feel this as complete disaster. Once the Tower is gone, what else could there be? The Tower had become their whole reality. What is difficult for them to see is that the Tower is definitely not reality. The Tower was, in fact, the reason this bolt of destructive energy was necessary.

Everyone is guilty of a little self-delusion now and then, but when we believe that insisting on something makes it true (or denying the facts makes them false) we are constructing the first floor of the Tower. On the inner walls we paint murals of the world the way we say it is. Some noise makes it in from outside, people try to peak over the walls to tell us what’s going on in the real world, so we build a higher floor. We paint more elaborate false narratives on this floor, but the noise and smells of reality are still ruining it. So up we go- and up, and up, and up. Finally our false world is painted so skillfully around us, and we have been in the Tower so long, we believe we are in the real world.

When we get there, so removed from the down-to-earth truth, the Tower has reached the height where it draws down the lightening of its own destruction. This feels like a catastrophe to the poor falling souls, but since this structure was unsustainable it was inevitable. Better it happen sooner than later. The higher up we build, the longer the inevitable fall.

This card is about grand houses of delusion being laid low. It is almost always painful, but it is also almost always good for us in the long run. This is one of the most traumatic, but also one of the most profound and important lessons of the Tarot.

If you are living the Tower right now, don’t start frantically gathering stones to rebuild- instead nurse the wounds you sustained in the fall, dust yourself off and walk beyond the ruins. Take a look at what the landscape really looks like.

Advice:

Look at things as they are.

Listen.

Open your mind.

Warning:

Don’t dwell among the ruins.

Don’t sink into self-pity.

You’re going to have to move on sooner or later.