The Healing Message of the Tower Card

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Elliot Adam, author of the new Fearless Tarot.

For many, the appearance of the Tower is often looked at as a disappointment. However, this card also holds the promise of a major psychological breakthrough. The Tower sweeps away any rationalizations based on artifice. It can remove the protective walls we’ve built around a sensitive vulnerability—which we may have trouble facing.

In this excerpt from my book, Fearless Tarot: How to Give a Positive Reading in Any Situation, I offer a constructive approach to viewing the tarot‘s most volatile card.

The people falling from the Tower were prisoners of their own making. They built walls around themselves that grew taller and taller. These walls separated them from feeling reality. The Tower gained in size and made them numb. Being numb kept them “safe” from being hurt by the past and the present. In the Tower, they could pretend there was no loss, change, or death happening outside. They would say things like, “I’m great! No sad things ever happened; what are you talking about?” The lightning on the card represents the inevitable crisis the Universe always sends to cause those in denial to wake up and to heal what needs healing.

Are there unresolved hurts from the past that you need to heal, surrender, and clear? What would you rather not deal with right now? Do you zone out to deny reality? Is there a fear that, if you open yourself to feeling, it will hurt too much and won’t stop hurting?

Despite the destructive imagery, the Tower is one of the most healing cards in the tarot. The Tower snaps us out of pretending we are not hurting. It is a cathartic card where old pains are finally felt and released for healing. In that way, the old pains no longer keep us a prisoner escaping reality. When you reflect on your life, you’ll realize the moments that made you strongest are often the hard times. Avoiding challenges doesn’t make us strong—dealing with them does.

Denial of truth is unsustainable. The Universe always sends along a proverbial lightning bolt to snap us out of delusion. The breakdown moment is surprisingly a blessing. Lightning bolts symbolize flashes of divine magic and epiphanies at play in your life. Once reality is accepted, it can then be healed. The people falling from the Tower are returning to Earth. Not only are they returning to reality, but they are returning to their true nature as well. The crowned roof of the Tower is also being ejected, symbolizing a need to get out of the rationalizations of your head and get back to reality.

When the Tower appears, it’s time to stop avoiding something that you know needs to be felt. It’s time to be honest with yourself and feel your real feelings. The Tower represents freedom from feeling trapped.

Let go.

Hope is returning.

Our thanks to Elliot for his guest post! For more from Elliot Adam, read his article, “How to Read Scary Tarot Cards without Fear or Despair.”