THE TOWER
Symbolism
The Tower card shows a tall building in flames with a lightning bolt hitting it and blowing a huge crown off its top. There are two figures, one crowned, falling from the Tower head first to the ricks below.
The tower represents our false identity and the beliefs that we have built our ego upon. It is our ego that is forced to jump to its downfall. The lightning bolt is the destructive divine force that has come down to break down any false sense of importance.
The card is primarily dark and black with clouds in the sky and golden flecks or ‘yods’ showing the influence of spirit. This card symbolises the needed chaos and destruction that we unconsciously call in to dismantle our attachments to the material importance that we falsely worship.
Keywords
Upright: Disaster, ego destruction, divine intervention, false beliefs and ideals, arrogance, pride, ambition, chaos, unexpected changes, superiority.
Reversed: Surrender to change, running away, ego denial, painful destruction, holding on, clinging to the past, warning for transformation, avoiding personal change.
Upright meaning
The Tower represents our man-made identity and our Ego. These are our programs and beliefs that have become personality traits and habits. We have built these characteristics on many ideas created by fear, lack and self-doubt. These traits and habits are not our highest truth but our comfortable realities. We have built personalities that feel safe holding to these beliefs but they no longer serve us.
We have gained the awareness of our attachments with the Devil and now we are ready to drop what is sabotaging us and holding us back. We have held onto our false pride, our superiority and our sense of self-importance for long enough and now it is time to welcome a ruthless divine intervention that has come to destroy what we are ready to no longer cling to.
We have copied our forefathers and inherited their beliefs. They founded the building of this tower and we have continued the habits of our parents and become Kings and Queens or our self-important world. We may be unaware of how our programming creates more separation between ourselves and the world around us so the Tower is destroyed to bring us down to earth and reconnect to the simplicity and humility of spirit.
This card is a drastic opportunity for change and transformation. It usually appears because we have not been open to change and have been stubborn in some way. The only guarantee to move on from what is holding us back is God’s lightning bolt and fire. It is time to build a home-based on self-love instead of fear and self-worth instead of lack.
We are asked to discover those beliefs which keep us separate from the world. They can be beliefs of superiority and judgements towards others but also ideas of not being good enough. This is also a Tower of low self-esteem that we can be Queens of! Whatever beliefs based on fear will be a brick in this Tower. Although the fears are limiting our life experiences, they are known fears and we feel safe holding onto the known.
The Tower delivers a shock and an abrupt push to move and change something, but subconsciously we have called it in because we are ready for the transformation. We might not know it and there will be discomfort and chaos for a while but the Tower doesn’t come unless we are ready for it. It is time to leap out of our ancestral patterns and restructure our relationship to others, to our work and to ourselves. Embrace our ego-death and pick ourselves up from the rubble.
Reversed meaning
The Shadow Tower is dark upon dark. It can have a lighter meaning but if we look first into the denial story, we won’t see much positivity. There are always positive meanings to all cards that come from the lessons that they can teach us but with this reversal we normally see that we are stubborn to resist the learning. When the house is on fire, it is not time to pretend that everything is fine, it is time to get out fast.
The Tower will fall and that is inevitable. We may be so attached to keeping things the way they are that we deny the need for change. While transformation is part of life, we make it uncomfortable by holding to the past and resisting it. Even when the world is crumbling around us, we may still look to hold on and run around blaming life for all the chaos that our resistance to change has caused. This is denial.
We have to get rid of the old to make space for the new, but sometimes we think we can make a superficial change without shaking the foundations. We have to be the change we want to create in our lives. The weeds have to be pulled by the roots or else they will grow back stronger.
If we grew up in chaos and with many slaps in the face, we may be resilient to this Tower energy. It may be normal for us and we can have apathy to change. This is another reason that the card is seen reversed. It may mean a stronger catastrophe is needed or that we may have to slap ourselves hard to wake up from our autopilot snooze-fest. It is time to leave the building however hard it may seem. It is more comfortable before the fire touches us.
The positive way of seeing this card is that it can be a warning. It is ringing the alarm bells saying that the storm is coming. But this is not a storm where we lock the doors and windows and hide, but one where we abandon the building and drive away. We need to choose to let go and surrender all that we think we are and all that we have given importance to. This takes real maturity to own our shit and surrender to the changes before we are forced to.
Since this card always talks about big changes, we need to prepare ourselves for some big shifts and maybe even light the fire ourselves.