the power of the tower
The tower reimagined
The Tower is a card that strikes fear into the hearts of many. It often appears to signify an internal upheaval or the crumbling of some external force, such as a job or a relationship. Classic interpretations of this card can be repeated, almost verbatim, because they’re used so often.
“A crumbling foundation.”
“This wasn’t built on solid ground.”
“Whatever isn’t rooted will be knocked down.”
Boring. Repetitive. Vanilla.
This interpretation, while valid in many cases, lacks nuance and poetry to me. Too often do we blindly accept this definition without pushing the boundaries of what this card could mean. First and foremost, I think it’s quite strange how often we talk about the shaky foundations of this card, but in almost every illustration of the Tower, the foundation actually looks quite solid. In fact, it is almost always the top of the Tower that is crumbling away, while the foundation stays intact.
What does this mean to tell us?
In my opinion, I believe that this shows us how quickly a good idea, a loving relationship, a project, or a path can get away from us. We begin with steel and concrete and stone. We’re invested in the process, building mindfully, piece by piece. But true to human nature, somewhere along the way we grow bored and complacent, trusting everything to run smoothly or “business as usual.” Simply put, we take our hands off the wheel.
Have many of you have unknowingly fallen into auto-pilot? We trust that the honeymoon phase will last forever, the windfall of good fortune will never dry up and as long as we keep doing what we’re doing, things will never change. But how often do we find that to be true? Before long, we feel like strangers in our own homes, disconnected from our partners, or building journeys that are stacked like Jenga pieces - ready to topple at any time.
In my estimation, the Tower does not speak to shaky foundations, but rather, a lack of oversight. Our passions, our projects, and our personal relationships require consistent supervision, revision, and review. We must stay engaged in the process, monitoring our progress, and ensuring that we are not taking on more than we can handle. It reminds us to take our chariots off of auto-pilot and back into manual drive. It encourages us to acknowledge where things have gotten away from us, where we’ve built for the sake of it without thought to the future, where we’ve taken advantage of our good fortune and forgot to mindfully nurture that potential into something meaningful.
“The good news is that the foundation still stands.”
- Lauren Bee
The Tower is my “a little off the top” card. It asks us to trim the fat, make alterations, and embody, once more, the thoughtfulness we had in the beginning of our journey. Where has a lack of supervision caused instability? In what ways has ignorance, arrogance or avoidance blinded us to the red flags along the way? Where have we entrusted others to fulfill a duty that was actually delegated to us?
The good news is that the foundation still stands. The potential still exists. And the possibilities are still endless. But knowing what we know now, we are invited to get back to basics and immerse ourselves into the process of careful curation. The Tower is not an anvil, but an arrow, pulling us back, so we may try once more to hit our mark.
