Laura Bruno’s Blog | March 19 2012

A few days ago, I mentioned how the increased militarization and decreased rights of the US all feel “very 9 of Swords to me,” as in “Awakening from the Nightmare.” Some people dread that card, yet emphasis and attitude determine how the card plays out. Do we choose to focus on the Awakening or the nightmare? Do we look around with an intense sigh of relief, feeling so grateful for the contrast between the Real and what only seemed “real” in a fear-based dreamscape? Or do we continue to scare ourselves by fixating on the nightmare? Tarot cards offer glimpses of our current possibilities. Ultimately, we decide what we do with any given energy or opportunity.

Another card that keeps leaping to mind lately is The Tower Card, which shows a giant tower being struck by lightening and people on either side catapulting from the fiery Tower into unknown depths. Other versions show them falling into the sea. The Tower represents a radical shift accomplished by sudden realization (lightning) that ejects both left and right. Old paradigms tumble from their former heights — into what, we do not know. Left and right can mean left brain/right brain, liberal/conservative, perceived morality codes, or any other polarized issue that fails to integrate itself.

Many people dread The Tower even more than Death or The Devil, but again, perspective plays an important role. Do we choose to focus on the lightning, the forcible removal of old paradigms, the free fall, or the fire? How does the implied trauma of this card shift if we acknowledge that the old paradigms no longer worked? The Tower was William Butler Yeats’ very favorite card, and it’s one of mine, too. It has a personal meaning for me, as I associate it with my 1998 brain injury, which arrived like a lightning strike and threw my entire sense of identity, thought patterns, and ways of being into a rocky sea. But you know what? That brain injury was the best thing that ever happened to me. Destroying the old reality opened an expansive and yet strangely intimate reality far beyond and far preferable to what I’d known before.

Continue reading →