THE TOWER: ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS IN TAROT
There are many ways for endings to occur; many ways to give death to a living thing. The tower alludes to exile from what once was; and in the breaking reveals what is also becoming.
We see this in the bestowing of wisdom on Eve in the Garden of Eden; where the path that led to this point can no longer be retraced, and the new life that could be summons us from an unknown destination.
Dream worker and writer Toko-Pa Turner calls this experience “exile from false belonging”. There are ways in which we belong ourselves to ideas, relationships, values, spaces and landscapes that though temporarily offer a sense of home, in exchange for a seat at the table, we are asked to be less of ourselves. And though the time in this space may last for minutes or a lifetime, we are eventually called home in both gentle and sharp tongues. It is our choice if we arrive by love or by fear. When the tower falls, with acceptance, we arrive in grace. With resistance, we arrive in pain.
The falling of the tower is less of a threat and more of an invitation, if you are willing to see it: things may be lost to fire, but in the ash embers remain to be tended and rekindled into a new life that is more true. It is a time for sifting, sorting earth from seed, to see what is truly viable. what must be carried forth and what must be left behind.
In ancestral terms, we live inside of the prayers that others have spoken over us; constructing our lives out of borrowed bones, shared language and inherited dreams, while building homes out of stories that are not always our own. Stories that we may live and die inside of if we never question their existence. During this time, we can ask our bodies to perform the dance of discernment: asking, what before me is a gift? what is a burden? what is living? what must be given death? And, am I willing?
Often in fairytales, the falling of the tower is symbolized by exile and the surrendering of external expectations: the leaving of one’s home for the solitude of the forest, the loss of love or family, the surrendering of status…
but usually this is preceded by a betrayal; maybe the home was not truly safe, the loved ones were deceitful, or the status we held required a kind of compromise which only allowed pieces of our whole selves to live.
In the myth of the Fox woman, as told by mythologist Martin Shaw…
she was sent to the forest by her beloved for revealing and honoring her animal nature. So there is the loss of something precious in comfort or safety when the tower falls, but the structure of it may have only endured to this point due to what we were willing to ignore.
If you find yourself in the midst of this kind of falling, it may help to lay these questions at the feet of what seems lost or broken:
what parts of yourself have you sent away to live on the periphery of your desire?
what fruit in you is ripe yet unpicked, growing dusty in the shadows of your denial?
what of your spirit have you sacrificed in exchange for acceptance?
and what must you surrender to call it back home?