A Tarot Lesson: What Does Your Tower Look Like?
When I'm doing readings for myself, I use the Fey Tarot. An important thing to remember when reading with this deck is that Fey look at life with a different perspective. Where the human world tends to be characterized by the constant struggle "to have," the Fey are more concentrated on the simple desire "to be." I have a difficult time just "being" so I am finding increasingly that working with this deck offers me much-needed inspiration to change the way I approach my life.
The basic spread to use with the Fey Tarot, which is particularly suited to a daily "check-in" reading, is three cards that represent our desires, that for which we have reason to be happy, and the work we must do to overcome our personal limitations. The cards are labeled Dream, Joy, and Magic.
Approaching the cards from a Fey point of view, to dream means to abandon the body and view oneself less literally, less rationally, but sincerely, directly accessing the unconscious with a willingness to detach oneself from "reality." Joy informs much of the Fey existence. While they know pain, suffering, guilt, solitude, anger and shame like every human being, they do not let these negative feelings overwhelm or defeat them. They face everything they encounter with hope and trust, letting joy shine through their lighthearted spirits. As inherently magical beings, Fey see magic as the possibility to do things that may not seem possible. It is the ability to break away from the expected, to change things, to reverse situations - to fly. In the Fey world, wanting is being. To be is to do.
The Waite Rider Tower
Today I did a reading where The Tower came up in the Magic position. As someone who learned to read the tarot using the Waite Rider deck, my first response to The Tower is always horror. But there is a vast difference between The Tower of Pamela Colman Smith's vision of a fiery, terror filled plummet to the ground from a lightning-stricken tower and that of the Fey Tower, which has as its base not the ground, but the heavens. The Fey who inhabits this tower is not fearful but bemused, because she knows that she has wings to fly away.
The Fey Tarot Tower
This is what the book has to say about the Fey Tower:
Things that were made one day are no longer. In as much as things can be trusted to time, it will devour them slowly and make them disappear. This is not a cause for anxiety, but of understanding the ephemeral, because everything vanishes; this does not mean it was in vain. The Fey closed in the tower watches the foundations of her house collapse and accepts that the world, today, is greater than her, and laughs.The tower returns to the difficult concept of pain and of loss. The basic symbol recalls the ancient tower of Babel, where the will of man was opposed to divine will and man was obliged to learn his limits. Over time the tower has become a symbol of imprisonment and pain. On the one hand, it means withstanding the violence that infringes our spirit, like rocks against the waves. On the other hand, it symbolises the erecting of barriers and fortresses that protect from the outside, and seeing them finally fall.
There are moments when everyone need to hide in a tower, to be closed within oneself and one's things, but these moments must pass, and man must know how to return to the cycle of life, to give and to receive. The moment, when it arrives can cause problems if one is not ready . . . but in the end it is necessary in order to keep growing.
The tower is drawn in such a way that it appears to come from the sky and not from the ground. This is because the foundations of man are always spiritual, not just material, and the force of time is unable to corrode that. All that we possess, even in terms of friendship, love, understanding, and health, can be placed at risk, but what we really are is untouchable.
This came as an incredibly powerful "wow" moment for me. To see The Tower in these terms offers so much hope and freedom from fear. In one moment, my perspective was utterly and irrevocably altered.
What does your Tower look like?
Posted by Angela-Eloise at 12:59 PM
Comments
Reminds me of a magnet that I have on my fridge that says: "Barn's burnt down. Now I can see the moon."
Posted by: Hecatedemetersdatter | March 31, 2007 6:19 PM
Magnificent! Your post resonates with Slade's today -- at least, it does for me. And the tower hanging from the sky reminds me of my meditation with the World Tree attached at the top to a bolt of energy from above...
Posted by: Jeff Lilly | April 1, 2007 10:37 AM
I made my own Tower pendant in an enameling class. It has the flaming tower struck by lightning, but also has a butterfly ("butterfly effect"/chaos) flitting by, presumably causing the whole thing.
I don't know what that means, exactly.
Posted by: Jennifer | April 1, 2007 2:50 PM
Jennifer, as shamanic totem animals butterflies represent transformation, transmutation and reincarnation. They also are associated with the power of the whirlwind and magick. I don't know anything about the butterfly's relevance to chaos theory (only because I know nothing about chaos theory) but I can see how the butterfly might be associated with The Tower. It's also a symbol frequently associated with the Death card.
Posted by: Angela-Eloise | April 2, 2007 8:50 AM
I have to thank Hecatedemetersdatter for her comment -- that is EXACTLY how I see the tower.
It's a HUGE change that may be for the best -- but it's earth-shattering.
Posted by: Carly | April 6, 2007 12:56 PM