It all falls down

Tarot is a funny beast, you get the devil card and we say it’s not all bad, you get the death card and we talk about rebirth… Well you get the Tower card, and things are crumbling.



It can feel like a lightning bolt from the blue, or like a river inexorably rising. You can know it’s happening or it can sweep you from behind, but sweep it does. Some edifice, something you’ve built that had substance and importance in your life, is breaking. And when the tower comes, although we can talk about things being better in the long run, in the short run it feels bleak.



I saw this card as I was looking for images, and of course it fits perfectly: - that shocking, awful, wrong experience that just crumbles things to the ground. When the tower appears, planes crash into buildings and we feel bereft…

From any loss, good can grow, in any tragedy, heroism can be shown. But the tower is about that feeling of everything breaking, the centre not holding, and we have to let ourselves feel the loss and mourn, before we can more on.



I like the Inner Child's Rapunzel image, because it shows that some towers were wrongly built in the first place. In an effort to protect the child she stole, a witch hides her in a tower. To the witch, the tower breaking is the loss of love, the death of a dream. To Rapunzel, the tower breaking is a total change, an escape from a weirdly loving prison, to the woods, where anything can happen...

I actually don’t get this card so often in readings, for which I am grateful (as no doubt are the people I read for!) But I’ve never found it to be about a trivial or simple thing – it’s about loss of jobs, breakups of marriages, foreclosure, bankruptcy. It’s an upheaval and if you see it in your cards, gather all the support you can because you will need it.