The Tower and The Sun

There is a tarot card that exists, one of the major arcana, that perfectly sums up many parts of life at the moment that might otherwise be hard to grasp. Think of it as a metaphor for what is happening to us all, to our society and our world. It is The Tower. Some of you who are reading this may already be familiar with the card. You've felt it in previous parts of your life or maybe you are a reader and you have had to explain it to others, on occasion. The Tower card is probably one of the most daunting, misleading cards in the entire deck. Being a major arcana, it represents a huge part of your life. Something that is not, by any means, minuscule or temporary. Its effects can be felt so profoundly throughout your life, and through transformation, you are forever changed. At a molecular level.

The Tower card usually depicts a structure. That's right, you guessed it. It's a tower!!!! The tower is usually on fire, sometimes being struck by lightning. It is illustrated to look like a collapsing structure. Something you would watch happen almost in slow motion. Bricks are falling, huge chunks tearing off the side. Destruction. Annihilation. This structure is forever changed. No longer standing tall and sturdy, no longer shaped the same. Completely falling apart until nothing is left. Perhaps this is why the card is so very intimidating.

In life, structures crumble. It begins with cracks in the foundation. The longer the structure stands, the more exhausted it becomes. Especially if it is no longer suitable. Especially if there is a much better, stronger structure to be built in its place. When the foundation is not right, when the structure has lost its sturdiness in life and needs to be completely transformed, it must come down. The thing with this principle in life, it is incredibly difficult to not only realize when a structure needs to be demolished but also to tear it down yourself. That is where the storm comes in.

Lightning and thunder pound the structure. The wind and the rain weaken the already decrepit walls. Stone by stone, piece by piece, it pulverizes as it smashes into the earth. Back to where it came from. There isn't much one can do, once the tower begins to crack. We may try to mend the pieces, but eventually, it gets out of control. It was always out of our control, though. It was always going to fall. The structure you once knew, once lived in, once was sheltered by, is no more. It is rubble on the ground. Dust in the air. No way of being revived. Swept away. Only empty space left.

This empty space is your chance to transform. The structure that once stood there has fallen apart completely, and in that experience, revealed itself and all of its blunders that caused it to form cracks in the first place. The crashing down has left you shaken and in shock. Change is not easy. Destruction is not pretty. But it is beautiful. It is necessary. Now you are left with a clean slate, a white canvas, a fresh start. Transformation occurs. The decaying structure has been done away with and the sun comes out once more, shining its golden rays upon the bare land you now have before you. This is what your soul has asked for. This is your chance to build a brand new structure. Taking into account what you learned from the previous one, this tower can be bigger. It can be stronger, brighter, better. It can have more space for what you now know about yourself. It can create new memories and dreams, house more tools for your next adventures. This tower can be built like the last one, eventually wearing out once more and finding its final resting place on the ground in too many pieces. Or, it can be built with the wisdom you now have within you, the strength you have discovered, and the will to create something new. It can transform.

The Tower card is about destruction and endings, but it is also about remembering that we will rebuild eventually. It is about balancing the nonlinear experience of grieving what has fallen, what has changed, what has been lost, with the chance to transform and rebuild your structure. Your life, your experience, your relationship, your heart. It is about beginning the long and strenuous journey of clearing out, cleaning up, mourning, accepting, and getting to work on your next tower that shall stand in the place of what has been swept out from under you. It proves that grief and hope are the yin and the yang of our emotional experience. Grieving what we have lost, what has changed, what is no more, is something we cannot escape. It will happen, whether we fight it with all our might or welcome it with desperate, weak arms. Grieving needs to happen. It is how we work through and understand our emotional, mental, and spiritual response to what has fallen apart. It is how we show up for ourselves and care for ourselves. Things will always fall apart, to make space for what is to come. Hope is the other half of how we heal. It is how we stand up after sobbing on the floor. How we decide to carry on. It is how we paint the vision of what will be built in the space that has now become free. It is how we get to the place where we finally allow ourselves to dream up our new structure. Our structure has already begun building itself as soon as the old one hit the ground.

Destruction allows us to let go. Let go of control, of expectations, of plans and ideas that no longer serve our highest good. Clearing out the debris and mourning what has fallen allows us to grieve, to feel, to understand what moves through our body like waves in the ocean. Hope allows us to dream. Dreaming allows us to rebuild, eventually. All of these things come together to help us accept where we are at right now. To accept the things we cannot control. The changes we cannot stop from sweeping over our lives. The towers we cannot stop from crumbling. The structures we cannot stop from falling and dissolving back into the earth. We cannot change what our reality consists of, sometimes. Especially right now. There is nothing we can do to control the uncontrollable.

The Tower card has fallen right into our laps. Face up. Destruction staring directly into our eyes. The structures in our lives are disintegrating. Changing. Swaying. Threatening to collapse. I begged my tower to fall because I know that is the only way I will get to rebuild. Don't give up on your dreams, friends. Please! Your structures are not crashing down below you to take you down with it. They are transforming into dust like the Phoenix burns to ash. Giving you the space, the material, and the opportunity to build something new. To rise as someone new. This is not the time to flush your dreams and lose all hope. It is quite the opposite. The destruction of our structures is a clean and clear message: have hope for what is to come and have a dream in your back pocket. Once the dust has settled and the debris has been cleared, it will be time to pull out those blueprints. The ones you have been dreaming up but never understood how you would get there. How you could build it. You will soon have the space and the materials you need to build that dream tower. To build your life the way YOU want it to be. The way you may not have thought was possible until now. Until destruction birthed a new reality. One that needs all of us, all of the artists within us, to create our new worlds. Our new structures.

So dream on, but don't discount your grief. Like I said, grieving and hoping go hand in hand. The good in the bad and the bad in the good. The yin and the yang. You may tumble back and forth between the two, experiencing highs and lows. Moments of pure inspiration where you are filled with the desire to design what your new world can look like. Moments of absolute emotional destitution where you are filled with the pain and sorrow of what has been lost. Those moments may weigh heavily on you, convincing you to give in or give up. I promise you this, love: the hope will always, ALWAYS come back around. I know this because it is in our nature to fall apart and be reborn. It is what we do, over and over again. When you are feeling up to it, take some space to dream of what your future can hold, once the world is ready to rebuild. Dream of what makes your soul soar and your heart flutter with magic! Imagine where you could go with what you are learning about yourself and your world at this time. Your destiny is asking you to dream of a brighter day and to hold onto it tightly so that when it comes time for you to begin building a new world and a new self, you will have found out that just because your tower fell, your dreams were not destroyed in the rubble. No, not at all. Your dreams, my sweet friends, are being reborn. The sun will come out, the warm light will reflect off of your skin, shining and showing the path that lies before you. We are all being called to transform. Can you feel it?