XV - The Devil + XVI - The Tower : Wake Up!
The card on the left shows a man-beast creature as a central and dominating figure. It has the wings of a bat, is horned, pointy eared, bearded, and has wide staring eyes. It has the bare chested torso of a man, and legs that seem half goat and chicken. It holds a torch in its left hand and its right is held up in a open palm gesture. In the foreground are two naked horned and tailed, human-like figures with chains around their necks and anchored to the plinth that the man-beast sits on. The card on the right shows a tall narrow stone tower as a central figure that stands on a rocky peak. It’s been struck by lightning, that has blown it’s crown top off. Flames come out of roof, and 3 windows. 2 people dressed in red and blue are seen falling-jumping out of the building to an unknown below. In both cards, the background is black.
15 The Devil plus 16 The Tower cards from the Rider Waite Smith tarot
It wasn’t my intention to share 2 cards today. When I drew The Devil card, I remembered that I’d drawn it before, and so quickly / automatically put it back in the deck - not wanting to offer repetitive “redundant” content. So I drew a replacement. Seeing The Tower coming in thick and fast afterwards, it felt like a clear message was being amplified and rammed home, and would be enhanced by exploring both cards together.
Both The Devil + The Tower are major arcana cards, and so represent universal, archetypal forces that we can experience personally and collectively. They’re probably the 2 most confronting, dark cards in the whole deck - so together they are asking us to delve into the more confronting aspects of self and world, and explore more challenging overarching life themes. The ones we tend to bury because they feel too big. The message though is to take a good look at these; as matter of urgency.
For instance, my response to being ‘redundant’ can be offered as a simple example of how a ‘life myth’ - as a major archetypal theme can persistently pervade even the most mundane aspects of life. In a split second, my lifelong, personal and ancestral pattern of people pleasing, control and being good was triggered, so I “forgot” that I didn’t care about that bullshit. I self-corrected, thankfully.
What is the major issue / persistent problem / archetypal pattern that continues to circle you?
What is the thing (thought, belief, behaviour) - that’s connected to your life myth - that doesn’t seem to go away, that regularly comes up for review?
Circling back over our stuff is a normal process of change - it’s a cycle of building awareness, then courage to move into discomfort, experimenting with new ways of being, then returning to “safety” to regroup and revise (so you can do that again maybe a bit ‘improved’). But, there can come a point where the repeated reviewing is a delay tactic or form of avoidance, and it’s just time to push a little harder and take a more drastic approach. As far as soul is concerned, enough dilly-dallying and dancing about the edge, it’s time to break through.
What am I playing the edge of? If I were to push myself over the edge, what would that look like in terms of completely new thinking, beliefs, attitude or behavior?
This can be particularly important when we’re working with very insidious material. So insidious you might be unaware of it - its hidden or repressed or denied. One of the most striking aspects of the devil imagery to me is how docile the 2 figures look. How can they can they take that weird googly-eyed-chicken legged-bat-man seriously? How come they’re giving it their power? Can’t they see? . While the devil can represent how we become slave to addiction and obsessions, another way to think about it is:
Where in my life do I go to sleep? Where in my life do I shut myself off from reality? How might this speak to my ‘life myth’
So with this type of insidious, shadowy and mesmerising force - a softly, softly approach will not cut it. You have to meet it with an equally powerful and drastic measure to rid yourself of it.
While the tower imagery, taken at face value signals an extreme disaster and things falling apart, I see it as a wake up call - a reality slap. To things not working. To the structures that have held together our lives no longer working. I’m drawn to the image of the crown being toppled by the bolt from the blue. The crown chakra is the 7th energy centre that represents consciousness, and our spiritual connection to all things - oneness - and so it is ego-less. With your metaphorical top being blow off, you suddenly see how you’ve been living life in a delusional way - A-HA!. While your wise self doesn’t take this personally, this can be a shock, and absolutely devastating to your ego - which hinges on being identified as a particular person, with a particular image, preferences, roles and ideals. With your mind now blown, you question who the hell you even are? and the ego /identity structure begins to break down.
What structures (inner or outer) in your life are falling apart? or in need of renovation?
Complete this phrase … “I’m the sort of person who _____________ / that _____________”
If your answer to the statement above were not true / If you were to shatter or break this down, and dismantle it as part of your identity. What would that mean about you? How might that change your beliefs, behaviour, relationships?
Using my own simple example from my earlier, I could say “I’m the sort of person who always says something interesting and new”. For me this is self-limiting, and only serves to perpetuate a myth about me that I’ve inherited and lived with for an aeon, that I am the best, and a good girl. Urgh. Shattering this, by resisting attempts to buy into it through obsessive behaviors like, overworking, ruminating, perfection, comparing, distraction etc … means I consciously and willfully allow myself to look and sound ‘stupid’ and lacking in knowledge. I even enjoy not knowing, and wildly celebrate people who are better than me. At times I encourage myself to be actively ‘bad’ or my favourite attitude right now, to be ‘subversive’. If you’re willing, ultimately this questioning and refusal to be a slave to old self ideals means freedom.
From personal experience and through observing people go through this process of slipping off the chains, refusing to numb themselves any more, and waking up! by leaping out the building while it burns down, and questioning everything. Its destabilising! It hurts! It’s hard to challenge every idea you have about you and your world, and rebuild yourself. Sometimes we don’t have a choice, because the lightning strike comes out of the blue - as illness, as job loss, and death and so on, and we land heavy in the rubble, and attempt a slow steady recovery. Other times, we can see the dark clouds coming even through the haze of sleepiness, and we know deep down in our souls we have to tear it all down, and begin again. If you can, if you have a sense, take the initiative to leg it down the emergency stairs before you’re forced to jump.
Much love,
Mendy 🐺
If you enjoyed this reflective practice, and would like to do more depth exploration using the tarot, consider booking a tarot counselling session.