Card 16: The Tower

After we have found liberation with the Devil, we walk into the destruction, chaos, and upheaval of the Tower. This is perhaps the most unwanted card in the tarot, but the Tower, like all tarot cards, has gifts to give.

In this episode, we will reframe the collapse as a rite of passage that aligns outer life with inner truth. We will hold fast and true to ourselves, and find the warrior within. We will discover some of the deepest insight that comes from upheaval, and rebuild, brick by brick if need be.

Main themes with this episode:
• the Devil-to-Tower arc and why inner shifts demand outer change
• rites of passage and how to hold steady in chaos
• an initiation to evolution and wild reclamation is going to remove things that do not serve
• the wisdom that comes with hindsight, and the power of the spirit to keep going, to have hope, and to be brave

Please rate the show wherever you listen. That is the best way for this podcast to grow, and it is so appreciated!

Links:
Purchase my Tarot Key

The Tower Blog Post

Numerology of 16

Book mentioned is Tarot Awareness: Exploring the Spiritual Path by Stephen Walter Sterling

Background track is Dark Nature by Polar Night

My Links

Chapters

• 1:32 Welcome & Today’s Focus: The Tower
• 3:50 Purpose of Deep Dives & Wild Reclamation
• 5:30 Support, Tarot Key Download, and Blog
• 5:47 Event Plug: Rocky Mountain Punk Market
• 6:35 Why The Tower Frightens—and Why It Matters
• 8:57 From Devil to Tower: Inner Work to Outer Change
• 12:02 Numerology of 16: Transience and Anxiety
• 15:15 Rite of Passage: Holding Steady in Chaos
• 18:49 Big Change Initiation: Condemned House Metaphor
• 21:26 Career Tower Story: Leaving the Shelter
• 24:28 Relationships That Resist Growth
• 26:10 Upheaval’s Gifts and The Validity of Pain
• 29:36 Foundations, Tiny Anchors, and Rebuilding
• 33:01 Mars Correspondence: Courage, Drive, and Choice
• 35:47 Pe (Mouth): Speaking Truth Amid Ruin
• 38:14 Tests, Trials, and the Warrior Spirit
• 41:09 Tower Symbolism: Lightning, Crown, and Structure
• 45:01 Austara Tarot: Doves Freed by the Fire
• 47:52 Keep Your Eyes Open for the Star
• 49:05 Closing Gratitude & Patron Thank-Yous

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the Wolf Child Magic Podcast. My name is Ashley, your tarot reader, mountain witch, wolfchild, creator, producer of this podcast, all of the things, and I thank you for being here with me today. Today is cold, it's dreary, it's foggy, it's true Edgar Allan Poe weather. I'm loving this. My little witch heart is a light, but it's also a great time to discuss our tarot card deep dive today, which is, as you can tell from the title, the tower. Oh, the tower. We're finally getting into this card, perhaps the most unwanted seen as a negative card in the entirety of the tarot deck. As with every deep dive that I've done, my goal is for you to get into the trenches with me in reading this card. And when I mean that, what I mean, when I say that, what I mean is that I want you to fully understand the blessings of this card, the edges of this card, the symbolism that you're gonna see. I want you to be so intimate with this card that when it comes up for you in a reading, if you read for others, that you just have this immediate intuitive pull. You're not scared of it, you're not frightened by it, especially with cards like the tower, and you see where it serves a purpose. This deep dive and my deep dives going back to the full, which every single one has a podcast episode, it has a blog post. I want you to take these cards and find your wild reclamation with them. To find your wild reclamation from standard resources and guidebooks, to find your wild reclamation and an untamed intuitive understanding with these tarot cards. I want you to have a sense of you in the ecosystem of these tarot cards, and that is all part of how I teach tarot again here on the blog in any class that I do. It is all about wildly reclaiming the tarot. And this episode, the blog post that accompanies it, is no different. Before we get into the episode though, if you like this episode or any episode that I have put out on Wolf Child Magic, please rate it wherever you are listening to me. That is the best way for this podcast to grow, and it is so appreciated. Thank you so much. In today's episode, just like every episode that I have done previously, I am going to be sharing with you the ways that I read this card, and I am pulling just straight from my tarot key. This is a PDF digital download, and I just sit here and pull it up when I'm writing the blog or when I'm talking here on the podcast. So if you would like the way I read the tarot for each of the 78 cards in a quick digital download with just keywords and short phrases, you can click the link in the show notes to get that. I will also be looking at and sharing some of the symbolism that I see from my decks. I encourage you to pull the tower out in your tarot decks and see what you are seeing. Looking at the symbolism is one of the best ways to first forge an intuitive understanding of the card that strips away every single standard resource, including me, and it just connects you and the tarot card together. So I will be sharing and devoting a section of this episode to just discussing what symbolism I have from the tower from all of my different decks. The blog post is linked where you can go and see pictures of each and every tarot tower depiction of the tarot. I have a feeling I'm gonna be doing that a lot today. But also the blog post is great because you have all of this material in written format now as well as audio format. One final reminder before we get into the episode. These markets are gonna be huge and so much fun. They're gonna have food and drink, they have cosplayers, they have so many wonderful vendors. I will be there at each one reading tarot. They're also looking to relocate. And so for each of these three markets, they have some huge raffles going on. I mean huge. When I put in a tarot certificate to have an hour reading with me for free, the raffle box, what you're getting if you win this raffle, is already at over$800 worth of stuff. I mean, it's absolutely huge. So if you want to have a good time, you want to potentially get your get your hands on some amazing stuff, see some cosplayers, food and drink, sit with me, then we will see you at Rocky Mountain Punk again on October 19th from 12 to 7. Alright, now let's go ahead and get into the tower. The tower again is probably one of the most disliked cards in all of the tarot. It's probably one of the most unwanted cards in the tarot. And it's easy to see why, because the tower represents chaos, it represents destruction, it represents this crumbling of things, of systems, of structures that we have grown accustomed and comfortable to. And that's what the tower symbolizes. However, as you know by now, I am one of those tarot readers that thinks there is good in every card. I don't believe in good or just bad cards. Every card has blessings, every card has edges. The tower is no different. What I will say though is even with the blessings and the good that comes with the tower, it is no joke. This is a card that when it comes forward in a reading, there is a sense of needing to maybe take a breath and be like, okay, we are in this moment, we are here. And one of the reasons why the tower can be troubling or hard to sit with is because when it comes forward, there's often not a lot we can do. And that's one of the biggest teachings with the tower is that the tower comes for everyone. The tower comes for all of us at some point in our lives. We all have tower moments, even long after they have passed, we remember those moments because of how much it changed us, how much destruction it caused, how much we didn't realize we were holding on to the tower and it needed to fall away. The chaos that came with it, the tower utterly changes us. And it makes sense that it changes us because it is the second card in the third line of the majors. I call this line the evolution line. And if you're gonna go back and listen or follow along with any deep dives, I recommend going back and looking at the devil because the devil is the initiation into the evolution line. It's the first card in the third line of the major arcana. And just a very quick recap: the devil is the great liberator. The devil teaches us that the chains that hold us become the freedom we gain. When we break those chains, we find our freedom. When we integrate the shadow, when we have this sense of embodying the angel and the beast within us, that we can't be just wholly one thing or the other. We have to let our authenticity, which is raw, which is visceral, which is vulnerable, which is beautiful, which is messy. The devil says when we show up in our authenticity and we're willing to look into the underbelly of situations in our life to find the shadow, to find the chains, and break those, that is where we gain our freedom. That is where we gain our evolution, our wild reclamation. And now the tower comes in and says, once we've done the work with the devil, which is in a very internal space, it may show up externally as in how we embody the devil in our waking lives and our waking days, but a lot of the work is done in a very internal place. And when the tower comes after the devil, it says that now the external has to mirror the internal. If we've done all this work internally to find our wild reclamation, to rewild ourselves, but nothing in the external changes, then we're probably going to eventually slip back into those chains. And the tower says, here and now, this is going to fall away. This system, this thing is going to be destroyed so that the internal mirrors the external. This is one of the biggest reasons why I say not to fear the tower, and we'll get more into it as we go, but don't fear the tower. We're moving through it, and we have to. We have to keep moving through the tower if we want to evolve and reclaim our wild selves, and we have already come so far. Looking at all the work we have done from the magician to now the tower, and the fool weaves into and out of every single card. We've done so much to get here, so let's not stop. It's easy to stop and say, This is too much, I can't go forward, and it's fine to take a rest, but we have to move through the tower. And when we move through the tower, we start to see where the gifts come. It's like we have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. We see this in the numerology, and I will have the link to the numerology of the tower in the show notes. But from one of my favorite websites, it says in relation to the number 16, which is the number of the tower, it says the number 16 is a karmic number. This means that there could potentially be terrifying life lessons following the 16. The most important experience is the lesson of transcendence, meaning that you need to learn at a deep level that everything in this life is transient and that everything will die, perish, get consumed by existence, and return to nothingness. This aspect could lead to extreme inner anxiety, making the number 16 difficult to master. And I love this quote from this website so much because truly, when we approach the tower, it is a core shaker. It shakes the tower to its very foundation, and it does the same thing to us. When we step into the tower, we are shaken to the very foundation of self. And that is the lesson. Because if we are to integrate all the work we've done up to this point, but especially again following the devil, we have to make sure that those chains that were holding us have fallen away. And again, it says that everything in life is transient, that everything will die, perish, get consumed, and return to nothingness. And that includes aspects of who we are, that includes moments in our life, it includes chapters, and the tower teaches us that the more we just hold on to the foundation and find a breath, we will eventually see the teaching, even if we don't see it in the moment, and that's what ego wants. Ego wants immediate understanding, immediate aha's, I get it, I see the connection. And with the tower, it's going to take some time. So we have to keep leaning in and trusting that this thing that has shaken us to the core will eventually yield something to us. And whether that's um a sense of understanding, a sense of forgiveness, or it says here again in the quote, this aspect could lead to extreme inner anxiety, making the number 16 difficult to master. And that's why I say before that the tower is hard to let go of. And there are people in our lives who would rather stay in a tower that is crumbling and falling apart because they would rather hold on to chaos and destruction and things that hurt them or hinder their lives from moving forward because it's known and because it's comfortable, leading into that void, that emptiness that follows after the rubble and the smoke and everything has cleared. That's what's really hard. Because then it says, What do we do now? And that is where the teachings of the tower come in. So when this card comes forward, we have to kind of hold on and have faith and trust that the insight, that the blessings, that the benefits will be revealed. The first way that I read the tower is that it is a rite of passage. So once we are free from that which was holding us back with the devil, all that that was within the old system, that was part of the old structure, that was part of the old self, that was part of the attachment, that was part of the understanding we needed to gain with the devil, has to fall away. Again, it has to be mirrored. Once we start the process of evolving, it isn't just the internal self that is going to be changed or needs to be changed. Our external lives must change as well so that the new us fits into a more aligned environment. If we changed in a myriad of ways internally, but nothing changed on the outside, then the change didn't really stick. And again, we would probably eventually slip those chains back on from the devil. And this is one of the reasons why the tower is hard to sit with, because that vortex of chaos, that just force that comes with this card, swirls from the internal to the external, and we feel completely out of control. And in a sense, we are. We're very we we have so little control over our lives, even when we're not wrestling with the tower. And the tower reminds us of this fact, and that's hard to sit with because control in ego's mind equals safety. And we also start to feel like we're just losing our mind, like there's just too much coming in that our brain is trying to process. And one of the greatest lessons that comes with this rite of passage is learning how do I keep holding on to myself? How do I keep holding to me, giving myself a hug, loving on myself, walking the path, and just continuing to keep going amidst this chaos and finding a trust within ourselves, within the universe that surpasses proof or validation. Like, cause if we were to look at just the reality, we would have every reason in the world to just let go, to give up, to never try again, to just not to not keep going forward. And the tower says with this card, we learn how to hold on, to not go back, and keep daring to believe that the storm will pass. And that is where we return to that foundation of self. That again, the tower is falling, but if the foundation is solid, that is the thing that we will rebuild on. And if the foundation is bad, then that's part of what will fall away, and we fill that with that loving, that holding on, that tenderness. But the tower says that when we hold in and hold fast to the self and keep daring to believe and take a breath and say this will pass at some point, this will not be my reality, or it will be a part of my reality because I will be changed from this, but it won't be the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning. That is what we are called to do when this card comes forward. And again, sometimes that means that we may have to let the tower do everything it's doing and then pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off after that has happened. The second way that I read the tower is that it is the initiation of the big change needed for your evolution. Once those chains are tossed aside when with the devil, like we've done this work, we've pulled this chain, these chains off of us, we have to step into the destruction that comes with the tower. And that destruction and that chaos creates that void, that leveling. And that is where we rebuild on the foundation, if it's solid, what we really need to evolve and reclaim our wild selves. If we simply try to just add something here or add something there, or take away this one thing here, that's not really doing anything. Like at the core, we're we're trying something, but it's it's still not helping, it's still a hindrance, it's still a detriment to our growth. So I want you to think of it this way, and this is kind of a weird way to think of it. But if you bought a house, great deal, you got this great deal on this house, but you knew that it like needed to be condemned, you knew that this house was like falling apart, something bad happened in here, whatever, that you knew that this house needed to be rebuilt from the bottom up. You wouldn't simply put new windows or new gutters on that house. You wouldn't do that because that's a waste of your time. If you were to do that, it might make you feel in the moment like I'm I'm doing something. Look, this is beautiful, but again, that's not fixing anything. You have to tear that whole house down and rebuild again from the foundation up. Another example would be, and I know that this when I was thinking of this example, it spoke so true to a situation that I was in that you have a job that you love, you want to make change at this job because you love it, it f it falls in line with what you believe, and yet you soon realize that this job does not support or care about you. You wouldn't just simply try to shift departments because if you did, the problems would still persist. And this was something that I experienced. This was the tower moment in my life was when I was working at a job that I thought I would stay at for my life. I I could not at the time see myself changing careers, changing jobs. And I was working at an animal shelter, I'm not gonna say which one it was, but at first it was wonderful, and then over time some things started to happen, and I quickly realized these people do not give a fuck about me. And here I am, busting my balls, coming in on my days off, staying late, doing everything I can to help this place because I loved it, because I loved the cats so much, because I wanted to make a change in their lives, and I ended up, you know, like moving into different positions, and I was taking on a more leadership role, and I soon realized that all that did was leave me more open to some of the people's attacks and venom that they were spewing, and it became such a toxic environment that I would come home every day crying, and I would come home because crying because I knew I needed to leave this job, but I was like, I don't know how I can leave these cats because some of these cats I had you know they were like my office pets. I had grown to love them so much that I thought of them as mine, and I was like, I can't stay here, but how do I leave these cats? It felt like a betrayal, and I went through these tower moments in this job because I kept trying, I kept wanting to do it this way, and I soon had to realize this job is holding me back. I have so much to give in my gifts and in what I love, especially you know, with animals and magic and witchcraft and nature. I can't do that here because I'm not valued here. And that was a tower moment for me because I kept trying to put the new windows on the condemned house, and I soon had to realize no, I have to walk away so I can make change and be part of something that does value me, that does support me, and it was the best decision I've ever made, but it was also one of the hardest decisions. Another example might be, and again, this is one that we probably all can relate to because this just comes with growing up and growing older, that you have people in your life that you know at the time you really love them, you really value them, um, you know, good friends or um people you used to party with or whatever you did with them, but these were people that you had in your life and you have great memories in your life, whether that's relationships, like you know, romantic, sexual, or just platonic. And over time you you start to change. You certain things that you used to do just don't hold the same weight anymore. It's not as fun anymore, you don't want to do it as much anymore. And so you change and you start to take on new things, you start to challenge yourself, take risks, step into unknowns, and then you try to hang out with these people, and they don't value where you've grown, where you've become a better person. They don't value the work you've put into yourself because now this new self is not in alignment with what they're doing because they haven't changed. And I know I can speak for me, especially with some of my romantic relationships, that the more that I started to grow as a person, the more I grew away from some of these people, and the more that I would try to like hold on to that relationship, the more that growth that I was working so hard on would start to kind of slip away. I would slip back into old habits, I would um forget some of these things that I really wanted to implement in my life, and that's kind of devil to tower moments is that when we make that change internally, when we work on ourselves, we have to have the external reflect that because it has to serve and honor and value all this work that we've been doing. So if you have a a friend or a relationship that isn't growing and resents you for growing, and so then when you're in these situations with this person or these people, you slip back into those old patterns that you're trying to grow out of. That might be a tower moment because it's calling on you to maybe break up with this person or no longer be friends with this person because it can no longer support this growth that you're doing, this growth that you're taking and initiating to become better, to evolve and to change. And that change shouldn't be sacrificed because other people don't want to either embrace the change that you're making or make that change for themselves. The last way that I read the tower is that upheaval brings intense insight, sudden shifts, and reveals if the foundation is solid. And this is where some of the blessing kind of comes in. But I I want to also provide a little asterisk here in a second that it's the upheaval in our life. It's the destructive forces, it's the situations that stay with us, you know, as like chapter titles or placement markers on our lives and on the road that we have walked to get here to this moment. Many of those tower moments are the ones that provided the greatest insight into what we need to do to fulfill our priorities, to fulfill our wants and needs, to evolve in better, more positive ways. And I want to, this is where the asterisk comes in. I want to also say that the tower often just happens. There's nothing we can do about it. Sometimes it is an internal force from the transition from the devil to the tower. Sometimes it is just an outside moment. It is life just handing us a a shitty hand. It is life handing us lemons and we cannot make lemonade. You know what I mean? And it's hard to find the blessings in that because finding the blessings in moments like that can feel impossible and sometimes are impossible. And we don't have to have this sense of like beautiful, rosy, you know, seeing the situation with rose-colored glasses. We don't we don't have to have that when we're working with the tower. It's okay to say that this tower moment in our life just absolutely fucking sucked. That is totally valid. I'm not saying that we have to love and just see a garden if it's only manure with these tower moments in our lives. And I can tell you right now, for me, obviously would be last year with my cats. That was the biggest tower moment I've ever faced. And I didn't do anything, and I felt like I was doing everything wrong, nothing was working, and that's just the way it was. You know, sometimes just bad things happen. Sometimes life is really fucking hard, and it's okay to not be okay, I guess is what I'm saying. And this is where the tower at the same time can provide some blessings. We don't have to love it, we don't have to see it with rose-colored glasses, but I can tell you one of the biggest blessings that came from that tower moment last year with me and my cats was Grizzly. And I talk about him all the time. Obviously, I'm so in love 11 years later. I'm so blessed that I'm so in love 11 years later. But I can tell you that going through that without him last year would have been so so hard. It would have been so hard because when I was just really hurting, like hurting to the point of I couldn't get out of bed, I didn't want to do anything. I had someone who would bring me a cup of coffee. I had someone who would rub my hair or rub my feet or give me a kiss and tell me he loved me, he would let me cry, he would let me yell, he prevented me from ripping my altar down, like with a hammer. And that was one of the moments in the tower that I was like, you know, I I knew that I had this good of a relationship. I like I I've known that, but now there's no question about it. Because this upheaval, and I also want to be clear, I I am not saying that that insight that I got, I wouldn't trade that back in for my cats. I obviously would. And that's what's hard about the tower moments is that there are certain things that just happen and we can't undo them, we can't take it back because that's the way life is, and so we don't have to love all these moments. But where we get through the tower is by tending ourselves, finding where the foundation is solid, even though it's uprooting us, that's what the tower is supposed to do. But if we have a foundation in ourselves and a foundation in our partner who supports us, a foundation in our community, whatever it is, that's what the tower also teaches us. Is like in the minute of all this upheaval and chaos and destruction that it's bringing, where's our foundations? Where are we solid? Where is something solid in our life that we can hold on to? And I'm also gonna be real and say, even if that is just a morning cup of coffee in moments of the tower, that is more than enough, baby. It really is like if the only thing getting you through a day at times is a stupid game on your phone that is more than enough. Doesn't have to be like meditating in a fucking meadow. It can be a TV show. It can be a book you're reading. It can be a loved one. It can be a song. It can be whatever it is. Those moments that follow you and help you in the tower are part of the foundation. And that's where I would not trade that for my cats. I would obviously any day of the week rather have my cats back. But I can't choose that. And so what I will do is lean into my foundation because I see now what how solid it is, and I will rebuild on that solid foundation because I can't stay stuck in the rubble. I have to keep going and we have to keep going. We have to keep moving forward. And that doesn't mean we just move forward and we never look back. Um it doesn't mean that. What it means is we take this situation however shitty or fucked up it is, and we build, we find our foundation, and we build again and we build again and we build brick by brick if we have to, so that as we go forward, it takes care of us, it sustains us, and it lends us to becoming better than what we were before. I want to share some corresponding information with the tower so that you can see how some of this applies. The astrological correspondence with the tower is Mars, and this book says the force of Mars to precipitate action, and then from Google it says in astrology, Mars symbolizes drive, passion, action, and assertion. It represents our primal instincts, how we pursue goals, handle conflict, and express anger and desire. Mars also governs physical energy, courage, and the warrior spirit. It goes on to say action and drive. Mars is the planet of action and motion, indicating your personal initiative, ambition, and how you take charge to achieve your desires, aggression and conflict. It governs how you handle confrontation, express anger, and deal with frustration. It also influences your survival instincts and how you protect yourself. Energy and stamina, it's related to uh vitality, showing us how we channel our physical energy, our sexual energy, and finally the warrior spirit. It embodies the courageous, assertive spirit that motivates you to overcome obstacles and pursue what you want. I want to share this here because the tower reveals, as I said before, that we don't have a ton of control. And sometimes, again, life just happens and we don't have a lot of control over some of these things that happen to us. What we can control is how we respond. What we can control is saying, I will not be undone by this, even if it's really, really, really hard. Even if you have every reason to give up and let go and just never have a care towards anything else again because of this, the tower comes in and says, Are you willing to find that warrior spirit within you? Are you gonna lay down and give up, or are you gonna have the courage to face this situation and lean into your foundation, rest when you need to rest, but are you going to lean in and keep going? And that is so fucking hard. And we all have moments where we've done that, we all we all have had moments where we maybe haven't done that, and it's not about saying just every time we're tested, we're just going to lean in and be aggressive and assertive. Sometimes it's better to just walk away, and that's what the tower teaches us. Do we have the courage to fight for this if it's worth fighting for, or do we need to have the courage to walk away and just let this go? Another correspondence that I want to share is the Hebrew letter, which is pe, I think that's how you say it, which means mouth, our outward mode of expression. One of the things, though, that I saw that really resonated again, especially with how the upheaval provides insight. Um, again, from Google, it says that pe literally means mouth and symbolizes communication, the spoken word and spiritual expression, which connects to the mouth of the tower that speaks truth amid upheaval. And that is what's so imperative about the tower is that we have to be willing to see the truth. And that's what the devil sets us up for. Again, if you go back and look at the devil, one of the key ways that I read the devil is that we have to look into the underbelly of a situation, into the cause, not the consequence, in order to deeply understand what is happening and how we go forward in a way that serves us. And once we do that, we can speak truth to power and we can let the tower speak to us the truth of the situation. And again, that may just be walking away, you know, kind of um clearing our hands, wiping our hands, and saying, We're done, this can't be rebuilt on, or it's saying, I will fight for this, I will rebuild, I will do whatever I need to do to continue this. Some other um correspondences from this book, it says the inner atmosphere consciousness expands as the ego learns from experience. If, however, the ego drifts from the lessons, then in order to return the seeker to the path, the atmosphere of the tower tends to draw severe tests, crises, and trials. The statement, I am receptive and I will shift my focus to the exciting vibration astrologers call Mars. I am ready for the force that must come my way. And the quotation that is associated with this book to the tower, there is something in man which does not belong to this world. Something mysterious, wholly, serene. It is this that touches and holds him at certain unforgettable moments. And that goes back to how we hold ourselves amidst crises, amidst amidst trials, amidst really hard times in our lives, when our life feels just completely uprooted, like we are a tree that has been uprooted out of the ground. How do we hold on to ourselves? How do we connect to others to connect to what is part of our foundation? If that includes any faith, if whatever that includes, how do we hold on to that? And that's gonna come into play once we move past the tower. Because once we get past the tower and that tower crumbles, we get to the star and we can see the star for the first time. So think about some of those things that are part of your foundation, because that's gonna be what helps get you through tower moments, and it may change, you know, certain situations call for different moments from our foundation, and again, it's okay if it's silly and trite because it's not silly and trite. So whatever it is, just let it be there, let it sustain you, and also just know that again, we all have tower moments, you're not alone. If you need help, you can of course reach out to me. But more than anything, as we find our wild reclamation, the tower comes in and shows us that it is worth it at times. Other times it's just hard and it's a hard chapter in our life, and we just move past it. It's all we can do. Both are okay, both are valid, both are true. Before I close out, I want to go into the symbolism of the tarot or of the tower. Said I was gonna do that. So I'm going to very briefly share a few things you will see within tower depictions. I'm not gonna go into every single card because my deck collection is starting to get rather hefty, and you can just go to the blog and see that. But I will break down the depiction from my favorite interpretation of the tower and share my thoughts. So, one of the things to consider with the tower is that it's one of the only physical structures that we have to work with in the majors, with the other one being the chariot and then the wheel of fortune. There's three. And because these are physical structures, it's not a title or an identity like the emperor, the empress, it's not a planetary object like the moon, it's not a trait like strength or death, it's a physical structure, and we work with physical structures in our lives. One of the biggest teachings with the tower, the chariot, and the wheel of fortune is how do we work with this structure from a place of rewilding? Meaning, how do we look or engage with this tool, with this structure, with this physical object from a sense of mindful attachment from spirit and from a recognition of what our higher needs are. Like, how does this fit into the overall ecosystem of our lives? And the tower, as we will see in the symbolism, was once a place of comfort, of grandeur, of identity. When we're working with the tower, as we'll see, we often see these very beautiful structures, and those beautiful structures speak for us at times, but again, we have to constantly be aware of is it speaking the truth, or has the narrative been distorted? And that's one of the lessons with the Wheel of Fortune. Are we moving and aligning in our migration, or are we kind of moving down a path that is not ours? Are we staying on the chariot too long? Are we staying in the tower too long? These are things we need to consider with the physical structures of the major arcana is how are we working with them? And as I said before, some people will never come down or out of their towers. The tower could fall with them in it, and they could have been given a warning of like, hey, the the mortar's bad, the brick is bad, it's all gonna crumble, and they will not get out because it's too scary to detach from that physical structure. And even if they were to be forced out, they will just put themselves in the rubble and build it again. Doesn't even matter if they should or not. So when we let go of the tower, the chariot, and even the wheel of fortune, which is one of my personal favorite cards, it allows us to embrace something bigger, even when it's scary, and that's something we need to consider. Some of the things that you will see with the tower is obviously a tall physical structure that's you know very long and tall, and that represents a detachment from our physical foundation of like the earth, of nature, of being connected to solid roots, a solid, stable foundation. Within the rider weight, we will often see two people falling out of the tower because the tower has been hit by lightning. Lightning is gonna be a very prominent piece of symbolism, um, a piece of imagery that we see in the tower because lightning is chaotic, but it's also this spark of illumination, but then it can spread into wildfire. It comes out of nowhere, and there's really nothing we can do to one stop it, and we don't know if it's gonna hit us, if it's gonna be far away. That's one of the things that comes with lightning is the uncertainty of it. And in the Rider Wait, we also see that the lightning has knocked the crown off of this tower, which symbolizes that this crown, however much authority it holds, it's it's not serving anymore. And there's a difference between authority and serving. What we want when we step into our evolution is to become better people, to become more wild spirits, to become more interconnected, to be able to serve and give and receive. And often what the crown symbolizes is authority that is stagnant, that is attach that is detached, uh, excuse me, that is tone-deaf, that is unaware. So the lightning here is representing how it is removing this form of authority that's not serving, it's actually hindering us. And again, I have all of the pictures from the tower from every single deck that I own uh on my blog post. Again, it is it is linked, but the one that I want to highlight is my personal favorite. Again, I'm not gonna go into all of them anymore. It's just too much. But the one that I really want to highlight is the tower from the Austara Tarot. And there, and this is the very first one that you will see when you click the blog post. So we see again this tower, it is engulfed in this inferno. Like the fire is everywhere. There's smoke, it's billowing, it's coiling around the tower. We see this huge full moon in the in the background, which represents this kind of need for intuition, but also the sense we're in a liminal time, we're in a space of kind of evolution, destruction, and creation all together with the tower. We're evolving because what needs to be destroyed is being destroyed, which gives us the room for creation, so it's all kind of happening together. And this little town is on fire, and the tower is falling now, it's like at an angle. But one thing that we see that was being held in this tower is all of these doves, and this great chaos, this great force of destruction with the fire and the smoke and the destruction of the tower falling has actually freed all these doves, and these doves are a symbol of peace, of grace, of divinity in some cases. The doves are free, they can now be seen, which means that we can take in their symbolic message of hope and peace, that hope and peace are not locked away anymore, that they are free to fly and be seen and go where they will go, where they need to go, where they can go, and that will influence others who wouldn't have been at this tower. And the reason that this is my personal favorite is because this shows that sometimes that destruction needs to fall so that the greater masses, the greater purpose can be served. That this uh symbol of hope and peace and divinity and grace with the dove can be spread far and wide, and we would have never even known that that was there had the tower not fallen. So sometimes, again, we have to just trust that the lesson will be found on the other side of this and we will receive a symbol of hope and peace and guidance as we get into the star. Um, I love this depiction, I think it's so beautiful because it just it highlights this need for us to be reminded that sometimes when these things happen, if we just keep our eyes open, the messages will come. And that is something really important to take from the tower because sometimes the tower can be can happen kind of quickly and it's over kind of quickly, sometimes it takes a while, and we just need to keep our eyes open for the messages, for the guidance, and for the symbols that are bringing us hope and peace and returning us to that foundation. That is the tower. I really hope that with this deep dive, you have a better understanding of where the blessings are with the tower, or just how to move through it when it's really hard. And whatever you feel is valid, it's okay. Again, my goal is just to help you find a way to settle into an intimate connection and relationship to these cards so that they serve you, that they work for you. Thank you so much for listening. I would like to thank my patrons, Depp Guy, Bobby McDermott, Lisa Zimmerman, Nicole Smith, Tracy Lanham, Kim Hardnett, Chris Ree, Miranda Snow, Colleen Twee, Charlie Ruggles, Shannon Konendike, Makai Rose, and Danica Favorite. Thank you all so much for your support in me and in Wolf Child Magic and Means the World. And until next time, dear listener, take care.