One of my favorite Tarot cards is The Tower. It looks super gnarly - fire, lightning, destruction, a tower with a giant crack in it.
It represents a major upheaval, inevitable destruction and sudden dramatic change. Like the Tower of Babel in the Bible, it cannot survive. According to The Big Book of Tarot (which I highly recommend), “Sudden crises are life’s way of telling you to wake up.” The Tower exposes what was hidden and allows people to suddenly see the truth of a situation. It crashes through ego and pride and shakes everything up.
Dear Reader, you know where this is going.
The Tower might seem like a strange card to love, but often something foundational needs to break in order to see that the foundation was cracked in the first place. A couple of months ago, in an interview of voters in the New York Times, a woman who had voted for Trump three times said one of the corruption scandals got to her and “it was like a veil was lifted from my eyes and I could see all of it - how he was for himself and not for me.” I remember thinking, “oooo…the foundation is cracking” after reading that.
There’s an affirmation that my Tarot app always uses when I draw The Tower: “I have the courage to break the structures that need to be broken.” This week, tens of millions of us - led by Black women, Latinos and young people - summoned the courage to break structures and vote for change. We voted to tear down the cracked, shaky, shady foundation of grift, police states and authoritarianism. We didn’t just topple the Tower, we burned it to the ground and stomped on it.
The reason I love The Tower is not just the toppling; it’s because to build something better you first need to break what’s not working. This week it was the US elections. But it could also be something in your life that needs to change.
On the other side of The Tower’s fall is The Star, which is about regaining hope, rebirth and building anew. It is a card of possibility and faith in the future. I’ve heard from so many people this week that they are feeling hope for the first time in a long time. Me too. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows ahead, but the future looks a whole lot better than it did on November 2.
Often my clients want to start at The Star. But you can’t. You have to topple your tower first; strip it down to the foundation and decide what to build instead. Start with the life you imagine. What is holding you back from the life you want? What towers need to fall? What would it take to break those towers?
And remember that although The Star is about hope, hope doesn’t turn dreams into reality. That takes hard, practical work to restructure and build the life you want. This is what coaching does, it meets you where you are, helps you figure out where you want to go, and then assists in finding your path to get there. Reach out if you have towers to topple. I’ll lend you my wrecking ball and help you find a new path.