Tarot: The Tower today

London

One of my birth cards is the much-dreaded Tower card (the other is the Chariot) so I have always felt an affinity for the energy of this card. Appropriately it & the Chariot are probably amongst the tarot cards most widely represented in our modern world!
The pictures of a brutalist block of flats, and the demolition of the same block, show a block designed by Sir Basil Spence, most famous for designing Coventry Cathedral (in fact this post was occasioned by the thoughts on modernism prompted by my visit to Coventry). These blocks of flats - tower blocks as they are known if they are high enough - symbolise the well-intentioned planning of the couple of decades after the 2nd world war, which went wrong as the years progressed. An interesting illustration of a tower representing our good aspirations which then don't work out. In Britain (some countries such as France have cities structured the other way round so that the 'inner city' is actually on the outside) if you find some relatively high vantage point to observe the structure of a city, you can see the higher buildings of the business and financial district sticking up out of the surrounding lower residential areas. Yes, there is less room to build sprawling buildings in city centres, but the actual outcome is that power & prestige = tall buildings. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the flats built in recent years in Birmingham City Centre, whether they will continue to be desirable in years to come.
Far removed from the para-sexual power imagery of big business, for Catholics a title of Mary is Tower of Ivory, signifying enclosure, virginity. Ivory towers of course more commonly refer to an aloofness from boring reality. The phrase also brings to mind the fairy tale image of the princess locked in the tower. Towers represent containment, both of something valuable & of something dangerous (in English being in 'the Tower' is proverbial for being imprisoned in the Tower of London). The card's title in some French decks, 'La Maison Dieu' can signify both the changing of values, and the theory (of which I'm very fond) that the tarot was a metaphorical raspberry at the church! The house of God may appear to be built on rock, safe from the waves surrounding it, but the lightning from heaven can still get at the inhabitants. In the Rider- Waite deck the shape of the lightning is that of a line going through all the sephiroth of the Tree of Life, suggesting a correction of an imbalance in the situation.
Of course the tarot card shows the people falling out. If this is an imprisonment it may come as a release & a relief. It may be scary if the tower is something you have built yourself to protect you & your values. There is a tradition that there is an unseen door in the back of the Tower in the Marseille deck, out of which the lower man is crawling, rather than falling from a great height.
When a tower collapses it is often catastrophic because of the height and extent of damage possible. The picture of a partially-collapsed tower block is of the Ronan Point disaster, caused by shoddy construction & triggered by a gas explosion, which was amongst the events which cast doubt on the wisdom of building higher, at least in Britain. When a tower is demolished it requires much preparation to do it safely, stripping out glass & asbestos, etc. If we ant to demolish our own towers we must put in a good deal of thought & preparation to make sure there will be no unintended consequences! There is also a great tradition of watching towers' demolition. We all love a good wrecking, but given the full symbolism of the Tower could it be that we are actually watching the destruction of unwanted values, despised privilege, and resented power?
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