The TOWER - Crisis and Creation
A Tarot offering for Taurus Season
When I chose the TOWER as our focus for Taurus Season, I couldn’t have guessed at the frequency with which I’d draw the card in my personal spreads during these liminal weeks of spring. I chose it because I thought it made sense to talk about the TOWER while Mars (the TOWER’s correspondent card) is transiting its home sign Aries, activating our will to take action. Also, like all of you, I’m living through 2026. Watch the news, and the TOWER, with its violent depictions of phallic hubris come to collapse, seems the closest archetypal approximation of modern experience.
Unlike the news media, I knew I didn’t want to stoke fears of tragedy and disaster with the TOWER. I wanted to highlight the creative force that accompanies the archetype. The faith it cultivates in our own resilience. The insistence that when life lays waste to our assumptions, beliefs, habits— something “better” (more aligned, evolved, self-actualized) can be built from the ashes.
With distance we can see the promise in such moments, but while we are living the TOWER, it’s very hard to feel anything except the fall. The fear of impact. The nervous system on high-alert. So I’m not sure I’ve learned everything that the TOWER has come to teach me, but this is how it has unfolded for me over the last few weeks. Take from it what you will.
My TOWER season:
On March 27th my husband underwent a surgical procedure to alleviate chronic pain in his lower back. The procedure was planned, routine, and (thankfully) executed with positive outcomes. Still—my response to the process of his surgery and recovery was dramatic—fiery and filled with low-grade panic.
Naturally, I was worried about my partner’s health and well-being. But, compounding these anxieties, I entertained shadowy judgements about my ability to perform the role of a “good wife” while he faced his own physical manifestation of TOWER-toppling, the ligaments and bones of his back broken down and built back up again by modern medicine.
For myself, I pictured Florence Nightengale (you know, one of the only female patriots to make it into my high school history book) and knew I wasn’t likely to measure up to her example. I imagined my husband’s physical discomfort amplified because he didn’t have the sense marry a nurse—but instead, stuck himself with a writer/musician who was selfishly disappointed about missing her band practice to wait out his procedure in the cold lobby of the surgery center.
And even though it was normal—even though the staff told me it was safe—I was shaken, seeing him shake from the waning effects of anesthesia. Then I wondered how the staff was evaluating my response. I looked for cues of how to judge myself, watching these people that I hardly knew.
Barely beating the kids home from school, I helped my partner settle into our downstairs bedroom and did all of the normal things I do to feed the kids and get them ready for bed (minus my co-parent). On the outside it was fine.
But inside—my anxiety over the surgery bled into my fears about the weeks to come.
How could I square my increased parenting duties with the creative work I hoped to pursue? It seemed I was likely to tip over the edge of my strongholding habits.
And wasn’t this just one more example of how consistently I failed to be the mother who could weather life’s storms without complaint?
I lasted a week before I cracked. Crying in the kitchen while my partner offered to make the grocery lists. (Oh my god I was so grateful to have someone make the grocery lists).
It makes me angry and not just for myself (because let’s face it I am the recipient of privilege and relative ease compared to many).
But here I am seeing (again!) evidence of the invisibility of domestic labor in this country—the failure of our system to support those (often women) who shoulder the burdens of caregiving “without missing a beat.” It’s telling, for example, that my husband’s doctors spoke about recovery time in regards to when he could go back to work, not when he could play catch with our son in the yard again.
But it’s not just the sexist, ableist, capitalist TOWER of society that I’m seeing clearly from the perspective of this (relatively mundane) fall from the parapets, it’s the ways that I’ve perpetuated these assumptions internally—still trying to suss out the rules around what it means “good” (meeting ridiculous expectations) and feeling rotten when I (inevitably) fall short.
I may not be able to fix this about society, but I can sure as hell stop feeling like I’ve failed because of it.
I like best to imagine myself living a kind of pirate’s life—charting a course with my crew of beloveds, a ragtag bunch of brigands sailing off in search of spiritual treasure. But when the waters get rough, I still cleave to old lifelines—looking for tethers to make me feel safe. The TOWER is teaching me that unrealistic notions of “goodness” are not anchors of safety, but chains of repression holding all of us back.
I want to cut those damn lines.
My favorite thought-work coach says “we feel security when we know that our own self-acceptance is unconditional.”1 And so I’m wondering—anew—what life might be like for me if I ditched heavy notions around what I think I should be and let myself be curious about who and what I am. Is this the moment when I finally ditch the habit of looking outward for reassurance that I’m doing things “right?” I hope so.
Crisis as Creative Boon
I think of what Brene Browne writes on the midlife crisis:
“Midlife is not about the fear of death. Midlife is death. Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death. Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you’re going down, and after that there are only two choices: staying down or enduring rebirth.”2
The TOWER, like DEATH, is a lifelong condition. Midlife makes this clear, but children model this on instinct—they stack their building blocks in full expectation of knocking them down. There is a joy in this kind of fiery release. A delight in destruction when you trust that picking up the pieces will offer new rewards.
Maybe you are ready to break apart something that’s been holding you fast in a landscape that no longer feels like home? Maybe there are habits that you’ve cultivated that are ready to topple.
Mars leaves Aries today for Taurus’s stabilizing terrain. May we feel the onset of summer in Gemini season as a time of sustainable growth and change. I know I’m approaching my summer break as a stay-at-home parent much differently than I have in the past. Releasing my tight-handed hopes of creating the “perfect” summer memories for my family and giving more space to my pirate-heart’s impetuous fancies.
Maybe you’re up for a little adventure, too?
Try this:
Draw cards for each of the following prompts below to see where the TOWER wants to help you release and expand in your own life:
CARD ONE — Where have I built myself a Tower of safety?
CARD TWO — How does this structure serve me?
CARD THREE — Where is it too tight? Too restricting?
CARD FOUR — If I let this Tower fall, what might I build in its place?
Journal in response to your findings and tell a friend what you learned. Or send a note to me. I’m listening. :)
How to work with me this summer—
I’m teaching two workshops on Tarot for Songwriters this summer! Thank you to Blue Frog School of Music for hosting! This is an opportunity to use the Tarot to unlock the songs (sea shanties perhaps?) that already live inside of you—in a context that emphasizes play and connection with your spiritual heart over perfection. You’ll come away with at least one full song as well as practices you can use any time to jumpstart you creativity and get into the flow. Click here for more info and to register.
Come to Tarot Circle! Follow Arcana Craft on MeetUp for announcements about FREE monthly Tarot Circle hosted by the Healing Temple ATX, as well as periodic online offerings on special topics.
Book a reading with me. I’m offering a limited number of one-one-one readings aimed at helping you to claim your birthright as “one who knows” and connect with your deep, intuitive compass, so that you can navigate through all of life’s waters with a sense of wholeness and confidence.
I made a TOWER playlist!
I used this playlist at Tarot Circle last month and the group was nice enough to ask for it to be shared. What songs remind you of the TOWER? Let me know in the comments.
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Thanks so much for reciprocating the care you found here with a nod in my direction. I deeply appreciate it.
Oh my gosh, please check out Kara Loewentheil’s podcast Unf*ck Your Brain. Her no-nonsense approach makes familiar concepts around self-talk and limiting beliefs land in a way that I find very potent. The above quote comes from her series on Confidence.
So powerful, Melissa! I'm glad your husband is on the road to recovery and hopeful he will be able to live with less pain and greater overall function. In this post you share what was so painful, and by sharing your vulnerability, it is such a gift: It invites us to be more human- To reach out more to our communities... and to be more loving and accepting. This Tarot journey was just stunning in how it ultimately freed you - and us - by examining what really holds us back from our authentic, powerful, magical selves. Love you!