The Tower – True Tarot Tales

The Hanged Man, Russia, Ukraine: a Tarot’s eye update

“In times of war, the law falls silent”. ― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, writer and staunch republican, assassinated 43 BC on the orders of Mark Antony who was then defeated by Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus.

The Tarot detects, reflects and may then project or predict in respect of a given situation. Its limitations are in the reader. Sometimes we may think we want to know something but actually, we don’t. Or we may indulge wishful thinking in interpretation unless we are careful. The less personally involved the reader feels, the more likely it is that the reader will see clearly, looking further down the road.

Late last night (28 February) I drew the card below, asking the Tarot for its comment at this juncture re Mr Zelenskyy (I understand that strictly speaking it should be spelled with a double’ y’.)

We have here The Hanged Man reversed. This is a card of Neptune. This is a card that is strongly associated with Pisces. and we are in Pisces season until 20 March 2022.

Card meanings: meditation, ultimate surrender, sacrifice, suspended in time, indecision, Drawn reversed: duty, the body politic, the crowd, breakthrough, giving to get.

More HERE

Events in Ukraine are moving on apace. Everyone has their own thoughts, opinions or responses. Me too, but when looking in my cards I must remain dispassionate if humanly possible and honestly record and report what I see or do not see. Right or wrong.

There is first the act of divination, the actual drawing of the cards. This is the psychic or occult element of the process if you will. That we expect to draw a card that will first of all, mirror with sufficient accuracy the issue being presented for left field analysis. What makes us draw one card and not another instead?

Some might say the reader can just make up anything they like. But if they know anything about Tarot, they know that each card has a list of associated interpretations. This list is long. It has to be. 78 cards must cover any topic, any question, any situation known to human experience. But the cards, while there are areas that lap over with one another, deal in particularities and not just broad themes and can only be made to stretch so far.

My core service for 20 years has been personal readings. If a reader is blagging it, talking mush, the client would know right away. For the avoidance of doubt, and to set the baseline of the rest of the reading, the reader must deliver something that is relevant, timely, specific and particular, and that can be validated or verified at once by the client. Preferably they will do it at once, with the very first card.

This kind of reading we are doing here is a different challenge, just as mundane astrology -using astrology to look at world affairs- is different from doing natal astrology or personal horoscopes.

The Hanged Man reversed was THE one single card I drew last night, asking to be shown a Tarot snapshot of Mr Zelenskyy.

That we drew The Hanged Man, and not only does the symbolism resonate but I see a physical resemblance to the living person is the mystery. What Jung termed the synchronicity of Tarot:-

Until last Monday evening, I did not draw cards clearly indicating war in Ukraine. They were mixed, ambivalent. I drew The Hermit in the mix (maturity,solitude, quiet reflection) and hoped for the best, having expected instead these following cards; The Tower, Ace Swords, The Devil, The World card reversed, or other combinations which, when added up would clearly point to a clear threat of war.

Mr P has clearly been war gaming this through the past two years of covid. He wants it all but without having to resort to a policy of scorched earth.

The Hermit is also about crops. Grains. It correlates with Virgo and the harvest. Both Russia and Ukraine are top exporters. Ukraine more so, I gather, able to provide food for 600 million people. There is going to be a sharp rise in the price of grain. But perhaps The Hermit is also a sign of hope because The Hermit is a pathfinder. He shows the way ahead.

I drew The Tower, The Devil and The Chariot Reversed six hours before the terrorist attack in Nice, Bastille Day, 2016. I did not know what they meant exactly. I did not know in what exact shape they would manifest in real life. There were a number of possible scenarios. I only felt that something terrible was going to happen imminently and that it would involve a vehicle, and I asked Il Matrimonio to go and check the tyre pressures on the car.

However, while logic said Mr Putin had clear and obvious designs on annexing Ukraine, and developments were deeply unsettling, the cards did not show these combinations, and so that’s what I recorded at that point. To do anything else to make it fit in with a conscious assessment of a situation would be to falsify the process of cartomancy. Even if it might be tempting, and not that one is not partial to one’s dignity, but to do this stuff at all, you have to be prepared to look like a fool or how can you learn?

The reader frames a question or states an issue, draws the cards, blindly and at random, lays them out, turns them over, and then tries to make sense of what they are looking at.

Last Monday afternoon, talking on the phone with my mother who knows a LOT about WW1 and WW2 and she said, “there is not just a whiff of Munich here, it’s a stench.”

I mentioned that I hadn’t been shown war yet, despite the growing signs, and had not drawn The Tower card, and did not understand why not yet.

The Tower. A shock. A lightening strike. A storm, Thunder. War. Hubris. Pride before a fall. A Tuesday. Mars. A bomb. Air attack. Earthquake. Tsunami.

A little while after our call I sat down for another look, and blow me down, there it finally was; The Tower, sitting smack in the middle of the cards.

Tarot Spread, Ukraine-Russia-West, drawn 20 Feb 2022, The Illuminati Tarot

Top left Mr P debating, wants those 2 states, wants ports, land bridge, do a deal? (2 PENTS) or go all out (central TOWER) What may prevent all out? Critical factor, bottom right. HIEROPHANT Reversed (tradition, govt turned upside down, key, faith, church, rules, banks) Fear of the anger of his own people.

These cards suggest

Best case scenario: Based purely on the potentialities contained within the book meanings of these cards. Deal might be Zelensky agrees to signing away the 2 separatist states – (IF it can be fairly demonstrated there is a majority support for them to rejoin Russia?)

Worst case scenario: Mr P trapped and desperate, fighting for his political life, and perhaps his actual life, goes nuclear beyond Ukraine’s borders. There are rumours Russia has already deployed a thermobaric weapon in his determination to ‘liberate’ the people of Ukraine.

Second worst case scenario: Mr P, trapped, frustrated and frightened at the prospect of a long drawn out Ukraine insurgency, decides to take the gloves right off in Ukraine, aided by Belarus, ganging up 2 to 1, and defying any other country to intervene to help Ukraine on a military basis. This would require that he must seize or crush Kyev now and quickly.

This seems the most likely scenario but the cards still reflect hope it may be avoided. We will come to that in a minute.

Let’s post the image again, save scrolling up.

Column 1 Mr P

Recent Past

2 Pentacles weighing risks/gains, land bridge, 2 ports(see the ships) 2 rogue states, weighing income streams pipelines NS 1, 2 and the proposed new pipeline to Beijing

Present

King Swords RX clever,, determined, ruthless, air sign king (Libra) cerebral, cool, cautious in calculation but decisive in action. This is Putin himself.

Future

10 Swords ruin, ill, (head/spine/cancer/bowel/kidneys?) coup, back-stabbed, (but at what cost meantime, this v likely won’t happen yet…astrology suggests he goes c March 2023 so….) Nuke Ukraine, wreck it this card is reflecting his calculation scorched earth = pyrrhic victory

Column 2 Mr Z

Past

3 Cups, friendship, female support, past enjoyment (his background?)

Present

TOWER war future air strike/nuke? (Mars ) foreseeing last Tuesdays outright invasion only the day beforehand

Future

Ace Swords clarity, victory, command of air space or satellite communications (eg Elon Musk Star link re communications/propaganda war for Ukraine) Cutting a Gordion Knot (the very thing we do not want Putin to do)

This card is AQUARIUS. Mr Z is Aquarius. Modern tech/social media. Not so much Putin’s strong point nowadays.

Column 3 The West

Past

6 Wands, riding high, team, success, arrogant, smug sports a priority, brave card goes with LEO and therefore high summer, page cups reversed, failed diplomacy, immaturity, naivete, attack from the SOUTH

Present

Page Cups reversed Failed diplomacy, empty cup, childishness, immaturity, naivete, the suit of cups correlates with the compass direction of west

Future

Hierophant Reversed What the West sees. Mr P fears ‘excommunication’ temporal. World bank global banking against Mr P. Much of this, we are already seeing.He may not care because future mega new income streams via China, but oligarchs and people care right now. This card is the thing he seems to fear most at this juncture. Ostracism by his own people.

SUMMARY

It does not look as though Mr Putin is not going to win this. There can only be losers here. He may achieve a military victory, and this is a dreadful and deeply unjust prospect given the circumstances. But should he seize Kyev in the coming days, aided by that gangster he keeps in his pocket, the kidnapper Mr Lukashenko.

But Mr Putin’s goal was not to wreck the Ukraine, but to harvest it. The Hermit. A military victory needed to be quick and clean. This is messy, dirty, vile and slow and makes him look like mud – a pyrrhic victory, as signified by that Ten of Swords. Mr Putin is acutely aware of this, but can not acknowledge it, which makes the situation even more terribly dangerous.

A number of astrologers (inc my favourites Patrick Arundell, Jessica Adams, Victor Olliver) have mentioned 3 March in terms of a potentially critical conjunction for this situation, between Mars and Pluto, occurring specifically at 8.43 AM GMT. This may be mitigated by a apparently happy and lucky New Moon in Pisces, Wednesday 2 March. A moon influence lasts two and a half days. Unless it means that some fortuitous development on Wednesday heads off something far less welcome in the nick of time.

The cards say Mr Putin needs to beware Taurus the Bull. The Hierophant Reversed. April and May. Global banking, agriculture, food security, ‘excommunication’ by the wider community but far more fatal for him- by his own people. Incidentally, there is a Taurus eclipse this year, Saturday 30 April.

The scenes are heartrending and this is a tragedy for the people of Russia too. Mr Putin is right to fear their anger. That Ten of Swords indicates his eventual over reach and downfall, left hand column, bottom card. Hubris.The West has also been guilty of hubris or complacency and this is a wake up call.

One astrologer has suggested President Putin is gone by some time round March 2023. Gone from office or just gone? But he can still do an awful lot of damage in that space of time, can’t he. The question is the final cost, and this is a karmic question of collective destiny.

Some very great, very deep loop or pattern is being replayed. This loop began December 2019/January 2020 and history -and astrology- suggests it will run till 2025/6 and we will then have a different looking world order.

We can see how frighteningly easily or quickly this situation could become WW3 or even a nuclear holocaust. No one knows. But I would suggest that Hierophant Reversed is not nearly sufficiently combustible. The Tower card is definitely sufficiently combustible BUT it is sitting in the centre. It is righthere, right now. The Hierophant Reversed is a crux card that will manifest in the near future.

The Devil is absent, and while the Hierophant Reversed can be read as authoritarianism, The Devil is a spectre of a holocaust, just as the Holodomor was a holocaust.

Sympathetic Magic

People have been known to mistake divination with ‘witchcraft’. Divination is one thing. Sympathetic magic is a different thing even though they may use the same tools or objects.

Magic, one might say, is a refuge of last resort and is a measure of desperation. Not so. We use it all the time and hardly give it a second thought. We say, cheers, all the best, goodbye (God be with you)

Words have power. People have been known to mistake divination with ‘witchcraft’. Divination is one thing. Sympathetic magic is a different thing even though they may use the same tools or objects. Prayer is a form of sympathetic magic.

It is said that witches of Plymouth whistled up a storm as the Armada approached the English coast. You can read more about that and other related stories HERE

Using runes in sympathetic magic to protect a home or a homeland, we might use several runes, either singly or in combination, like so –

Top rune: Algiz/Elhaz/Eol. TheElk, called sedge by some. General umbrella protection

Central rune: Nied. This rune literally means NEED. As in, here we need protection for a household or homeland or our parents.

Left hand rune: Othala meaning homeland, a family household or stronghold, family inheritance, legacy, ancestry, parents and ancestors

Right hand rune Thurisaz, the Thorn, used in attack and defense. A powerful rune of protection, associated with Mollnir, the hammer of Thor the Thunder god

Bottom rune: Dagaz. We get the modern English word Day from this rune. As in, for instance, let there be another dawn for those under fire this day. Fiat lux!

NB: You don’t need to buy runes. You can just draw them, say their name, call on the influence they represent. Just as we sign off messages with “Best Wishes.” The principle is the same.

*The Sun from The Golden Tarot by Kat Black*

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength but loving someone deeply gives you courage.”― Lao Tzu

As we watch that 60 km invasion convoy coming in, and all seems well nigh lost, I draw the Eleventh House card for Mr Zelenskyy…..Aquarius, technology, Star Link, Elon Musk. Eleven is a lucky number. This card was drawn last night.

Perhaps there is still hope for Ukraine.

Take care until next time 🙂

The Taurus New Moon and The Tower

Tuesday 11 May, was a New Moon in Taurus. A New moon is the optimal time for new launches, say the lunar calendars, while Taurus is all about beauty, security, and the sensory delights and material comforts of life, also the status quo.

There were plenty of new launches all right, and challenges to a current status quo. Lightning struck more ways than one. A new peak of tragedy in Gaza, seemingly never to be resolved, no peace without an agreement on justice, the skies raining missiles, the death toll rising, children killed inside Gaza, a whole family today,and a little baby.

Locally, close to my own home in Lancashire in the UK, a little boy was tragically killed, struck by lightening, while he was out doing football training. Jordan was only nine, clearly a very nice little boy, and well known locally, and a big Liverpool FC fan, already known for his charity endeavours. RIP, little lamb.

Junior Sprog’s young man meanwhile, had been up to his waist in his fish pond about half an hour before this horribly tragic event, doing a spot of DIY, installing a new filter for his beloved koi carp. I told her, half- joking, he needed to come out of there. He was at risk of being struck by lightning. But the storm’s gone, she said. Well, yes, it had, just about. The hail had stopped but the sky was peculiar, ominous, the conditions ripe.

It looked like that scene from Independence Day, said Il Matrimonio, the scene when the aliens arrive, creating clouds as they hover on their coordinates across the world’s cities, waiting the moment to strike.

I have written about The Tower card more than once before in previous postings here on this blog.

Well, it’s a biggie, and generally, I am not pleased to see it. The Tower card and I have had direct encounters before, and they were not fun.

But that’s by the by. Keep your friends close, as they say, and your enemies closer. Let’s take another look at it today, The Tower, Major Arcana number 16. Sandwiched -entirely by design between The Devil, Major Arcana 15, and its obsession, dependency, desire, frustration and rage, and The Star, Major Arcana 17, cool, impersonal, harbinger of hope and recovery, humanitarian but oh, so logical at times, prone to abstractions and ideological dogmatism (as today Saturn moves out of Aquarius; an ideologue’s dream and dogmatic stellar combination if ever there was one, but sadly moves back in again during July 2021.)

Countless numbers are living The Tower experience right now.

Some high profile practitioners have made it something of a mission to intellectualize and sanitize the Tarot, and to educate other readers to present its manifold truths in purely metaphorical or psychological, sometimes Jungian terms.

So The Tower card symbolizes a great awakening. Pride comes before a fall and the truth will come out. And ultimately, this is good, they may say, because what is lost can be scrapped as not fit for purpose or rebuilt on better foundations. It is for the spiritual good. Good for one’s soul.

I agree, up to a point. I am all in favour of looking for the silver linings in any cloud, and of the notion of putting myself and others in charge of our own destinies, at least assuming responsibility for our own decisions and the consequences of those decisions.

But readers of the Tarot limit themselves in stipulating HOW the Tarot is to be used. The Tarot is a tool kit. A flying carpet for thinking and feeling beyond the normal personal and social boundaries.

There is no standardization in this field, and it needs to stay that way. There is no such thing as ‘A’ Tarot reader. There is only the particular individual reader and their own service remit and their own way of working.

There is a difference between articulating the professional ethics of reading and promoting an ideological agenda to ditch the Tarot as a futurist or fortune-telling vehicle in favour of its use in counselling, or for ‘spiritual development.’

It needs to be recognized, or else the reader risks being guilty of hubris themselves, not every ‘Tower’ (or Devil) experience, not every destructive event necessarily has a beneficial outcome or valuable Life Lesson attached, or indeed anywhere in prospect. What were the ‘lessons’ for the parents of the child victims of the Moors murderers?

Grace is the sacred Grail in greatest grief that no-one can deliver to another person. No counsellor can do that, no priest and no psychic reader, though a reader may perceive occasional intimations.

Not every question has an answer. This was how I came to study the Tarot, after years wrestling with a seemingly insoluble and relentlessly invasive health problem after my right knee went out from under me one day, and I went down on my face in the road. Sometimes there are no solutions for the cards that Life may deal us. There are only our own, unique responses in coping, which cannot be prescribed by a reader, but may possibly be divined.

The ‘higher truths’ of our existence are not intrinsically more sacred than the bottom line. And, ‘God does not disdain to serve the body’, as Julian of Norwich once said.

People ask about money, work, homes, jobs, travel, studies, prospects, family, other real people they know. They want to know about outcomes, timings, reasons -specifics, if this is possible.

The Tower may also mean:-

–A Tower– literally, as in the Tower of Pisa

–Tuesday- named after Tyr/Tew the Norse god equivalent of Mars which rules Tuesdays. If your question is when and you draw the tower, it maybe a Tuesday or during Aries late March-late April or Scorpio late October-late November because these signs are ruled by Mars. Or it may mean that it will happen very suddenly.

–Rain, wind or storm not only has The Tower card forecast rain or a thunderstorm on more than one occasion, -and once this was very welcome, during a heat-wave. One Friday evening it forecast a storm which turned out to be an actual tiny, typically British tornado, which came screaming down my road next morning at 8.30 and neatly, tidily flattened a neighbours garden wall.

-Bad news, a quarrel, shocks, earthquakes, traffic accidents, the collapse of building or other large structures, bankruptcy, job loss, relations breakups, marriage breakdown, accidents, sudden medical emergencies eg stroke, heart attack.

-Stroke, heart attack, fit, seizure

The Tower might be saying, ‘dognabbit, you need to check your tyre/tire pressures!’

The Origin Story

The Tower card, derivative of the Blasted Tower, the House of God or War, is ruled by the red planet Mars, ruler of the zodiac signs of Aries and Scorpio, with powerful mythic and archetypal associations, not least The Tower of Babel.

Mars is the planet of outward activity, high animal spirits, passion – courage and sometimes -a state of war.

The Tower of Babel or The Tower and the City is an origin myth from Genesis though actually older, that tried to explain why the world’s peoples speak different languages.

According to the story, a united human race in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar, in Northern Mesopotamia.

They build a city, so far so good. But then they decide to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God doesn’t like that, and confuses their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, babbling on…and now they are at cross-purposes and can’t complete the building works, and they fall out with one another and go their separate ways, and end up scattered around the world.

God is reacting to an act of hubris. The word Hubris is from Greek, and means “excessive pride, violating the bounds set for humans.”

Greek myth was very big on hubris.

BUT still readers need to face it, working with the full range of possibilities, that The Tower may be speaking, not figuratively, not metaphorically, but entirely literally, whether we are talking past, present or possible future.

If a reader draws The Tower, they carefully examine the surrounding cards, and if they perceive clear and present danger, may not say so in such terms, but may present any advice for risk reduction or risk avoidance in a calm, matter of fact manner, ‘talking in terms of ‘just to be on the extra safe side.’

I once drew The Tower alongside The Knight of Swords reversed, and, based on other cards, including the Four of Wands (home improvements) got a sinking feeling that the client was at risk of a nasty fall. I asked her, was she doing any decorating? She was. And had she been climbing up on a ladder to do so?

Yes, she said, but she had not come to see me to discuss this. She wanted to know about Mr X.

I persisted with a warning to be extra careful if climbing up on anything. I would have felt negligent in my responsibility towards her had I detected this risk and not said anything. She expressed mild impatience. I left it there and we continued with the analysis of the main issue of the day.

About three weeks later, she was painting, standing on a windowsill, and slipped and fell, fracturing her hip, and had to go to hospital as an inpatient. She was many weeks in recovery and months in physio afterwards (she was a lady in her late sixties) How do I know this? She came herself to tell me.

Life is just deeply sad sometimes. When something life changing has just happened to someone, and they have experienced a Tower experience at full blast, they may not be ready to hear that it was for the best, that it will prove to be a liberation, a blessing in disguise, that their previous existence had outworn its purpose.

It may be a time for on the one hand, practicalities, possibly deeply unpleasant, and on the other, well, in such times we reach for comfort, warmth, solace, beauty. Poetry, essentially. The common treasure chest of poetry, music, hymns, prayers, I will lift up mine eyes, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, a season to every purpose under heaven, and so on, depending on the person’s own cultural background.

When someone dies, they leave behind mourners, living memories and a dead body, to be handled, dealt with, honoured, visited if there is a grave site, but ultimately, to be reclaimed by the earth or the elements, just as we were first made from the elements released from dying stars.

The Tower, like The Death card reminds us that nothing is for ever. Suffering is part of life, and is the price we paid not to live forever as single- celled organisms. Clones. Death was the first ever Faustian pact, the price of evolution and specialization into personal individuality. Suffering was the price of individual consciousness and sensation. Fear was the price of suffering. Hunger was the price of appetite. Grief and anxiety were the price of love.

‘This too shall pass.’ the saying goes. This, from a speech by Abraham Lincoln in 1859, “It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words `And this, too, shall pass away.’ ‘How much it expresses!” Lincoln went on, “How chastening in the hour of pride. How consoling in the depths of affliction!”

Abraham Lincoln, 1853, attrib Alexander Gardner

Lincoln was so right. But it’s not like that at once. Not at first. The bucket must first hit the bottom of the well before it can be drawn back up again.

That is why in a tarot deck, The Tower card is followed by the healing of The Star. But healing and recovery, new Hope, like Truth, like Nature itself, can be as stern in its honesty and its travail as it is a marvel, mysterious and beautiful.