The Tower Comes to Destroy
Part 1 of 2
two thin towers shooting fire into the air.
The Tower comes to destroy a house
It does so regardless of our affection or malice towards the catastrophe. It does not stay to help you clean up the mess.
The Tower will not recommend a therapist of color in your area. The Tower will not leave a casserole on your porch with a note of condolence.
It's spiritual bypassing to say "The Tower is necessary" and leave it at that. It’s the tarot version of “It’s all in god’s plan”or “Everything happens for a reason”
We live suspended in The Tower as a country. War follows war. Tragedy follows tragedy. Public cruelty piles atop already under resourced lives.
Yet this is not the only archetype of The Tower--the Tower of Babel. The House of God Struck By Lightning.
There is a younger archetype within the lore of The Tower.
By scrutinizing that image, we can better understand the complexities of tarot's morality.
The Catholic Church as a colonial power provides tarot with most of its archetypes.
They reflect a world colored by the church and the European renaissance.
The obsession with ancient Greece is there. The alchemists are present. The devil looms behind every corner. Even the costumes give renaissance.
We must consider the role colonial Christianity plays in creating tarot's archetypes.
Tarot for Liberation works to change the vantage point from which we see tarot.
It goes beyond card meanings to form a metatheory of how tarot can help us. It bypasses simplistic discussions about where queers fit in tarot. It asks instead how tarot can change the way we see the world, and how we live in it.
The Tower is a card whose impact depends on where you sit.
If you built the Tower, you're probably having a shit time. If you're trapped in the Tower, you may now become free--if you can survive the fall.
But it also matters whose side you're on, and which tower you think is falling.
Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho
My family began to worry my Christian education wasn't working when I turned fourteen.
My grandmother finally ended her overlong tenure as my sunday school teacher. I entered the Teen class with a sigh of relief.
She had kept me in her Junior class an extra year. (She was very serious about my walk with her god.) She read through her bible once a year while listening to it on tape. Yes, both at once.
When I'd stay over, I'd wake to the drone of her tapes. I'd see her, before dawn, still in her night dress, her huge bible with its pink floral dust jacket open on her bed.
My grandmother was a constant interlocutor, and a friend of my mind. But that year, I found we viewed biblical history through different lenses.
And she was OBSESSED with history. Particularly Black History, of course, and as such, Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was having a moment in the 1990s--King Tut and all that.
My grandmother took it a little farther, as is our way. She had the print, the necklaces, the rings. If they had it, she had it.
To my grandmother, Egypt was proof that Black People helped to make the modern world.
It was a part of her religion. It was part of her self-understanding.
Nevermind the empire. Empire was part of her religion too, a bigger part than Egypt.
So when I told her my concerns about Joshua's behavior in Jericho, she did not share them.
The Joshua of the Christian bible rose to power when Moses died. God comes to him, and is like "make a colonial state for yourself in Canaan."
The biblical book of Joshua makes clear why Christianity is the premier religion of imperialism
A entire nation becomes an army. They carry the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain in a magical gold box. These tablets of liberation become a tool for colonization--the Ark of the Covenant.
Joshua and his army circle around the busy city of Jericho for six days. They blow horns. They carry the ark of the covenant. They pray.
On the seventh day, everyone shouts. The walls fall.
This, too, is The Tower.
And for Christians, this Tower is great.
All because their God hated the Canaanites. All because it was foretold to Abraham.
All because in the biblical book of Leviticus, they were said to lie with animals, have gay sex, and believe in another god.
To know Leviticus was never anything more than a book of propaganda may provide the gays some relief.
I had already had my suspicions with Lot's wife. (Another Tower tale.) Let alone Lot's daughters. I sparred with my youth pastor about Tamar.
But the idea of laying low a thriving city was where I drew an internal line.
Only two books prior, the reader is asked to rejoice about the murder of every man in Midian. We're asked to side with Moses when he's pissed his soldiers left the women of Midian alive.
To Christians, the only perspective that matters in the bible is that of the colonizer, of the patriarch.
How else do you believe the story of Lot over that of his daughters, pregnant with their father's child?
How else do you celebrate a war built on gossip and prophecy? Whether you believe the gossip and prophecy or you don't.
Imagine yourself besieged inside of Jericho for seven days. Spied upon, then attacked, then sacked.
This, too, is The Tower.
Of all tarot's archetypes, The Tower brings the most immediate danger. Accidents, injuries, imprisonment, and sudden acts of violence are all manifestations of the Tower.
To even acknowledge this is to challenge the overly-psychological readings of tarot that have become all too common.
Tarot, like most spiritual technology, is reduced to mere self-help. It's capacity to speak to some of the most difficult experiences in human life is minimized in service of individualism.
Yet archetype is powerful because it's recognizable, even in crisis. Even without a lecture, or a plan of indoctrination that starts young.
In 2003, what could I see in Joshua that I didn't see in George W. Bush? What could I see but another warmonger, using god to cover his crimes?
What could I hear in those shouts but "Axis of Evil?" What could I see in Leviticus' gossip but "Weapons of Mass Distruction?"
How could I love a god of war? How could I love a god who created people he didn't love, solely for the character development of those he did?
These questions were the lightning that struck my tower of faith.
It bothered me that the priests came to shout down the walls. It bothered me that burnt the homes, and looted the residents.
To my grandmother this was fine. God had said so. No other justification was needed.
It's simple to believe as you are taught. It is simple to do as you are told.
I'm not a biblical scholar, obvi. I'm an ex-evangelical church girl from New Jersey. And there I was force-fed what politicians have said all week:
That winners win and losers lose because of god. Any other answer, whether racism, or systemic abuse, or neglect, or poverty is an excuse.
A passive reading of The Tower reinforces the narrative that god loves some people more than others.
A liberatory reading of tarot may draw our eye to the construction of such a god. It asks to what ends is such a god useful, and to whom?
The Hierophant who passes along bias with knowledge. The Hierophant who stands in for the church. The Hierophant who soaks up and mystifies the power passed to them by the Empress and Emperor.
The Hierophant who hides their hand inside of a god whose mouth they control. A god who reflects their own biases.
Further Thoughts
5 Pillars of Tarot for Liberation
Capitalism, Scarcity, and Tarot Love Readings
Seven of Wands: Tarot for Conflict
hey, i'm cyree jarelle. I run Collective Cartomancy. I help queers, feminists, and leftists connect with their intuition using tarot and cartomancy. More on me.