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The Tower, the 16th Major arcana of a tarot deck symbolizing catastrophic change, or even ruin. When I first found out about tarot and got my deck back when I was in high school, I wasn't particularly enamored by any card. Eventually my phase of researching the occult passed, and I went on living. I graduated high school, and then… nothing. I took a year off school, promising I would go back. I eventually did and went to the shittiest community college in existence for a major I wasn't passionate about, and dropped out due to the pandemic and online classes not working for me. A few months passed and I quit my service job too. There is only one word that accurately describes my life during that period: stasis. The world was moving down its tracks and I felt the wind buffeting me as it passed but I stood there, absolutely still. During this time, when I would pass half of it sleeping and the other half feeling too guilty to do something, anything at all, was when I took another look at my deck of tarot cards. It was then that I saw The Tower again, and yearned for it. I wanted nothing more than disaster to strike me, to get me to change when I was too weak to change myself. I wanted something, no matter how painful, to rip me from my stasis and set me in motion again. The impetus of change to finally get me moving.

I know I am not alone in this feeling. Recently on my best friend’s birthday, his mother read for us aloud his birthday’s entry from The Secret Language of Birthdays: Your Complete Personology Guide for Each Day of the Year by Gary Goldschneider. As she got through the reading I felt that we both knew the description of a charismatic seducer and manipulative people person did not accurately describe him. My curiosity led me to flip to my entry, eager to see how it would misrepresent me in a similar fashion. What I read there had me feeling exposed somehow, but outwardly I maintained a facade of mild interest and stoicism. I was being described as sensitive, unusually feminine, depressed. One who is long suffering but empathetic and giving. This was the first time I recall having felt called out by any one of these things like astrology or horoscopes; I don’t subscribe to any of that stuff. I conceded to myself that what the book was saying did describe me. What stood out the most to me, and is the reason I bring this up at all, is the statement, “The danger is that they will get locked into negative patterns. Often a chance happening or even a shock is needed to reorient them, followed by a sudden realization of their behavior and subsequent resolve to improve their situation.” The shock, the upheaval, The Tower. My friend then piped up saying, “That sounds like me!” and at that point I felt relieved. That is because I realized that this book is just casting a wide net that hits every aspect of a complex human being’s emotions and personalities, people just choose to identify with what makes sense to them. It is also because I realized that I was not alone in my feeling of needing change or external forces to correct my course. I made sure my friend felt seen later on the drive home as I admitted to having those kinds of desires as well. I also agreed that my entry more accurately described him. What I didn’t admit was that the book got me on the nose.

There is a small part of me that feels like I wanted to go through something awful so that I would have an excuse to act the way I was, or maybe I felt like I deserved punishment for my failures. Either way, that absolution through destruction never came and I eventually somehow got a move on with my life. I'm doing better now, thanks to the support of my family, friends, and my partner. I now realize that “The Tower” is not necessary for someone like me to change. 

There are many ways to interpret each tarot card, and for the tower it can also be seen as an opportunity to improve and rebuild. When something is destroyed, something new will take its place. Chernobyl now has a vibrant ecology, the cretaceous period gave way to the paleogene, and cities improve after great fires raze them to the ground. To me, the tower means the hope that comes with destruction and the growth that comes as a result of it.