The Collective Collapse of The Tower
My favorite card in The Tarot is The Tower. If you know anything about Tarot, you might be shocked to hear that; but I spend a significant amount of time these days talking to people about The Tower and the power of discomfort and change. Usually it’s an image of (you guessed it) a tower, and it’s crumbling or burning and it’s usually accompanied by people below or within the tower, fleeing, falling or panicking. What’s more, is it’s almost always being struck by lighting from the heavens. Almost every time it shows up in a reading, the person I’m reading for laughs nervously, and says, “Uh-oh… that doesn’t look good.” Which, truth be told, is almost a tell-tale sign of exactly why The Tower is probably necessary in their life.
It’s natural for us to feel fear. Fear keeps us from putting our hand on the stove when we know it’ll burn. It’s also natural to not what to lose what is familiar to us, and to want to want to keep bad things from happening to us and the people we love. What isn’t natural is the conditioning we’ve inherited from ideologies and belief systems that have taught us that what is uncomfortable, scary, or painful is also “evil.”
There is a fine line here, of course. Does that mean that we should use that reasoning to justify causing other people pain and suffering? No. Just because pain and suffering are part of the human experience doesn’t mean we should go around hurting people and then exclaiming that it is “inevitable,” and therefore, “justified.” That’s the reasoning of abusers and people who cannot see past their own personal experience of unhealed pain - but I digress. It does mean that discomfort will occur, and when it does, it is our job not to let it swallow us whole and devour our ability to live. Our job as human beings in this physical plane is to experience discomfort, and let it be a roadmap for unraveling the mystery of who we truly are. What do I mean by that?
Sculpture by DIet Wiegman
Picture a coin standing on its side so that both sides are visible. For our purposes, imagine that there is a single light source in the room, so that inevitably, a shadow will be cast on one side of the coin. The single light source is life experience, and the coin is the way you perceive that experience. Think of any object, really! Think of your pet, your friend, your kitchen table or a cup of tea. The only reason this physical experience is visible to you is because it is a combination of both light and the parts of things light doesn’t reach. Without those parts, You would be viewing a completely different dimension (which is another conversation for another time.) When we launch a desire out into the universe, that “light source,” is the response to our desire. When we launch a desire collectively, that light source is extremely powerful.
Every experience we encounter in this lifetime is a combination of both “light,” and, “dark.” I shy away from, “good,” and “evil,” because those words can make it difficult not to place judgement, and when exploring our own darkness, it’s important to put judgement aside.
So what does this have to do with The Tower? Well, The Tower is an incredible opportunity. I’m always immensely grateful when the card appears in a reading. I think, “Thank the gods you came here! Thank the gods you decided to ask a conscious question so we could discuss your discomfort.” Whether you go to the doctor to see why you're having headaches or not, the headaches will occur - and if you’re sick, you’re sick regardless of whether or not you decide to deal with it. The Tower is going to occur in our lives whether we face it or not. We all have the chance to face the fear, the falling and the panic or to move through our lives pretending it isn’t there - and it’s going to fall whether our eyes are closed when it happens or not. Period. The gift of this life is the beautiful moments when we get to discover just how strong and just how powerful we really are: but we deprive ourselves of that opportunity to see a whole picture, light and dark, when we avoid the discomfort. And what an incredible thing that when we are in pain, some part of us will always launch the desire to no longer be in pain into the universe! Our job is to look for the opportunity take that road when it appears. And what’s more, we can do that collectively. Humans are pretty amazing.
So this is what I mean when I say our feelings are a roadmap for unraveling the mystery of who we truly are. When discomfort arrises, it’s our job to say, “hm, this doesn’t feel good,” and try something else. If we choose not to enough times, it becomes harder to read that map. (This is also what trauma recovery looks like - relearning how to feel each of our feelings, in the moment, and letting them tell us what we need.) We have been collectively traumatized by capitalism and a culture that doesn’t value the human experience in regards to health. So, you can almost picture this moment in time as a divine source reaching out and telling us, “you’re tower needs to come down. You deserve so much more.” Divine sources don’t experience what some people call, “contrast,” like we do. That’s our job: we are the lens through which collective unconscious and divinity experience this physical plane. The further and further away from that divinity (that we all inherently possess) we get, the easier it is to become lost in this human experience. We may begin to self medicate or try to numb ourselves to escape.
We are currently experiencing the collective collapse of The Tower. Many of you are feeling scared, depressed, and things that perhaps you never wanted to look at again are resurfacing with nothing to keep it hidden from you. But I am willing to bet that many of you are also feeling some strange sense of relief, because the truth is that The Tower was an antiquated structure that no longer served you. But when those feelings of discomfort arise, ask yourself: Why does this cause me discomfort? What do I believe these feelings say about me? What do I believe it says about me if I am experiencing discomfort because I am not living authentically, and what do I believe the result would be if I decided to try that? How can I care for myself right now, and comfort my wounded child who is afraid of these feelings?
After The Tower in The Major Arcana comes The Star - the birth of inspiration, new light, and Aquarian energy. The Tower, an old, broken down, human structure simply cannot contain the light of The Star. It is too great. So, during this time of collective evolution, and your own personal evolution, remember that the same way light cannot exist without darkness, darkness cannot exist without light. Remember that we are all connected, and that your personal evolution is an intrinsic part of the collective evolution. Sometimes, acknowledging your authentic experience and honoring the darkness in you is the greatest revolution of all.
During this transformational time, let’s promise to be kind to ourselves. I hope each of us can spend some time with the discomfort, and allow it to have it’s very necessary time, so then it might move on. Like the rain that must fall for the Earth to flourish, I hope we each find courage to bath in the shadows, the dark things, the things that we fear, so that we might reemerge knowing that much more about who we are as divine beings.
As always, you are not alone. Be well, stay safe, and above all, love yourself.