LESSONS FROM THE TOWER
The Tower, from Leonora Carrington’s major arcana tarot deck
The Tower has been coming up quite a lot lately — in the readings I’ve been giving for friends and clients, and in so many other ways during these fraught and frightening times.
It’s hard not to be freaked out when this card comes up in a reading, or with our daily tarot pulls — because it feels like such an intense portent of DOOM!
The Tower is necessary and forceful change — and for those of us who tend to be resistant to things shifting (even when they desperately need to), this kind of upheaval can feel totally brutal.
It can take a looooong time before the dust settles, and we’re able to see that the Tower finally falling was the only way that anything was ever going to change in the first place.
The Tower is the fault line that results in massive shakeups. It is the stagnant, roiling, energy before a crazy thunderstorm rolls in — and in my case, it was a literal hurricane (Katrina 20 years ago next month), that changed my life completely. That intense storm literally blew my roof off — which is exactly what is depicted in the Tower card.
At that time, I was cruising into my Saturn return, totally lost and aimless, mired in self-destructive habits and relationships, and utterly without direction.
I knew that I needed to move out of New Orleans, if I was ever going to change anything in my life — but taking any action on that awareness felt pretty terrifying. I was totally stuck. Paralyzed by the idea of moving forward, but unable to make any positive motions in the swamp of indecision and confusion that city had become for me.
It’s hard to say what would have happened if my landlords had taken better care of my second floor apartment in the Marigny — but I know that if the roof had stayed intact, I probably wouldn’t have had as much motivation to leave… Even though the city felt so destroyed and fucked up by Katrina’s force, along with the systemic neglect and mishandling that made it so much more destructive and devastating. My neighborhood didn’t flood, and aside from trees ripped out by the roots, most of the houses were just fine. It would have been tempting to just… stay put. Rebuild from the rubble around me, and double down on everything that was keeping me trapped there.
But you could see the sky through what remained of my ceiling, and everything I owned was covered in mold, rat-shit insulation, and plaster debris. It was clearly time to go — and now I had a lot less to pack…
So I loaded up what was still salvageable into a tiny Uhaul trailer, and started my life over back in Austin (my hometown). It was incredibly humbling, traumatizing, and soul-shattering. And I know now that I wouldn’t be who I am, or where I am on my path, if I hadn’t been forcibly picked up, and blown westward by the storm.
That’s what it took for me to make the changes I needed to embark on — and really, it was only the beginning. Those shifts actually led me through to several other dances with the Tower as I stumbled through the next few years (and messy aftermath) of my Saturn return…
It certainly wasn’t any fun, and I wish I could have made it easier on myself by taking the brave leaps into the scary changes I needed to make, instead of plugging up my ears and becoming addicted to denial — but the lessons are only able to be learned when we’re truly ready.
I was a particularly change-averse and stubborn student (my prominent Capricorn stellium doesn’t really help with that!) and to be honest, I still grapple with these Tower lessons at times — but I’ve gotten SO much better at recognizing that the billowing smoke indicates fire, and that I have the power to bend my knees and JUMP, rather than waiting around for the universe to give me a push (or a Cosmic Bitchslap, as the case usually is, when the Tower is involved…!)
I’m very grateful now (yes, only in retrospect) for those harsh lessons — even though I carry scars from them, still. It’s through interpreting the hieroglyphics of those scars that I’m able to assist and guide others through their own big Tower moments — and that is a true honor and privilege for me to be able to do, in my life and work. If I hadn’t gone through any of it myself, I wouldn’t now how to survive it again, or help anyone else when it arises in their lives…
I’ll be writing and sharing more about my experiences with the Tower, the lessons of Saturn’s return, and surviving multiple climate catastrophes here — but for now, I’m curious if you can relate to any of this?
How has the Tower shown up in your life? What did you learn from those disruptive cataclysms (and how do you relate to it all, now?)
