Something different and very cool happened today when I was pulling my card. My friend walked in and sat with me while I was with the card, and we began to speak. He asked me the meanings behind the Tower, so I explained them to him.
The Tower, Key 16, Waite-Smith
I told him that we often build our lives up from shallow places, and that those structures inevitably fail. An excess of pride, ego, superficiality, materialism – these and more contribute to whole ways of life which neither serve us or those around us. Even very spiritual people actively working to better themselves often find themselves in ivory towers, denying themselves fun and life in favor of their concept of a pure life. When life brings us the realization that we’ve been living in one of those false realities, that is the Tower energy. The experiences of sudden epiphany, for some people shame, in our own lives and how we’ve conducted them shallowly – those are the feelings associated strongly with the card.
He was fascinated to hear about it, but to help him know the differences in scope the card can have in a reading, I gave him examples. I shared about a recent experience with natural hallucinogens and plants which we both shared, and how it changed some of my precepts in ways I still didn’t totally understand. A third friend joined us, and explained how her dad recently kicked her out of her house, and how despite how much that hurt she felt suddenly free from needing to please her parents.
Slowly, we all shared how our lives reflected that we’d been living with false boundaries and weird pride, and how our experiences had been chiseling away our convictions that what we’d always done was what we were supposed to do.
We rang my prayer bowl and sat while it rang out. It was beautiful, and I will invite them in again – this daily Tarot practice has been unexpectedly amazing, and today really makes me see that even though I’d always felt a daily card was an intensely private thing it doesn’t have to be. It has blossomed into a daily theme that enriches and colors my world, and it can definitely do the same for those around me.
The Tower in Hebrew is ‘Peh’ – פ – which means mouth. It is the breath of god that pushes us from our unhealthy comfort zones, and helps us to strive towards a better life. I couldn’t think of a better letter for a day where my tarot meditation turned into a circle of friends talking. Cool 🙂