The Tower

 

A crowned tower atop a peak has been struck by lightning.  The crown on the tower has been knocked off and flames sprout from the windows.  Two people have been knocked out of the tower and are falling toward the ground.

This isn’t necessarily a horrible card to get in a reading but it can be.  If it’s effects are softened by other cards in the reading it may just show a sudden reversal of luck or the destruction of a belief system.

At its’ worst it can indicate a real calamity.  It can show a huge financial loss, for instance, or a home being lost or destroyed.  On the level of relationships it can show a complete loss of faith in the relationship or the person the questioner is involved with.  Imagine coming home and finding your husband in bed with the baby sitter. THAT kind of loss of faith.

One of the aspects here is that the loss tends to be sudden and totally unexpected.  It’s not something you can plan for, it just happens with no warning. That’s a major part of the feeling of devastation.  Like the lightning bolt it’s literally shocking.

Another aspect is that it tends to shake you to the core.  You question your beliefs, your faith, all of the things that you took for granted in what is now your former life.

Did I mention this is a bad card?

REVERSED:  The calamity has happened and the questioner is now in the recovery phase.  The question is whether he or she will find the inner strength and spiritual resources to deal with the loss and rebuild their life.

Some More Thoughts About the Tower:

Shit happens.

And that’s one of those terrible truths that can be so difficult to accept.  You can be walking merrily down lifes’ path, whistling a happy tune and admiring the sunshine when you get run over by an out of control ice cream truck.

Shit happens.  When it happens to someone we don’t like or someone who is a blatant bastard we tend to say, “Ah, HA!  He certainly got what he had coming!”

When it happens to someone who is a really good person – or even worse, to us – it tends to be more of a head scratcher.  We tend to revert back to that child-like state and ask, “Why did this happen to me? I’ve been good.”

And we do buy into that equation that the quality of your life is equal to the quality of your actions.  If you’re a good person, then good things will happen to you. If you’re a bad person then bad things will happen to you.

We buy into that despite a lot of proof to the contrary.  There are some very wealthy people who have screwed over everyone they’ve ever met.   There are many loving, kind people living in abject poverty and hunger. Philosophers and religious leaders have been trying to explain that for as long as humans have existed.

The fact is that we don’t really know why catastrophe strikes one person and not another.  We just know that it does. The only thing we know for certain is that personal disaster either builds character of it destroys it.  When your entire world has just gone up in smoke, when you’ve lost everything that you held dear, then all that’s left is what you’ve got in your own heart.  You either use the strength you’ve got inside of you or you develop inner strength in the process of recovery.

Alternatively, you can just give up.  Or become a cynic who despises life. Or cry out that there’s no justice and life isn’t fair.

Because . . . you know . . . shit happens.