The Tower: Hope Amid the Falling Stones

The Tower: Hope Amid the Falling Stones
by Sherry Whitfield

Lately, many people I speak with are struggling to make sense of the chaos in our world. People feel that the world is unraveling — that everything familiar is shaking, changing, or falling apart. It’s an unsettling feeling, but also a deeply human one.

In Tarot, there is a card that speaks directly to this experience: The Tower.
It’s often seen as frightening, — lightning striking, fire raging, people falling — but in truth, The Tower is not a punishment. It is a release. It tears down that which no longer serves us so that something new, something true, can begin to grow. 

We are living through a Tower time. The lightning has struck, and the old structures are breaking open. It’s not easy, but within that upheaval lies an invitation — to awaken, to heal, and a chance to rediscover hope, compassion, and our shared humanity.

The Tower is an energy and a promise  — that destruction can clear the way for renewal — and it can become grace. This is why Hope is not naïve, but necessary.

What follows is my reflection— my meditation—on The Tower and the Light that comes after it. It's my wish and prayer that it offers you a way to see this moment in time not only as loss, but as an opening for hope, healing and truth. 

Even in destruction, there is purpose. The Tower is a promise  — that destruction can clear the way for renewal — and it can become grace. This is why Hope is not naïve, but necessity.

The Tarot as a Mirror

The Tarot is more than a system of divination or fortune-telling. It’s a mirror of the soul — a guide through the archetypal patterns of human experience and spiritual evolution.

The Major Arcana, just twenty-two cards, maps the great journey of the soul: from innocence to awareness, from illusion to truth. Each card marks a stage of spiritual development. And though we walk that path in our own ways and times, we all cycle through it, again and again.
I'm not the first to see the Tarot as a spiritual roadmap leading us towards greater awareness and a deeper compassion for all living things, including ourselves.  

Today, I want to speak about The Tower, card number sixteen — the great awakener. Its energy has been active in the world for quite some time now, and many people are feeling its effects.

The Tower’s Energy

The Tower represents sudden, often shocking change — the crumbling of structures we once believed were permanent.

It’s the collapse of old certainties, the breakdown of beliefs, habits, and identities that have grown too rigid to hold living truth.

Some have called The Tower “The House of God,” but I think of it as the house of a little-g god — the false idols we’ve built from fear, pride, and the need for control.

These towers rise in every human heart and every culture: our dogmas, our biases, our self-protection masquerading as righteousness.

When lightning strikes — when truth hits — the illusions cannot stand. The Tower falls.
And though it’s terrifying, that fall is also sacred, because it frees us from the prisons we’ve built for ourselves.

The Sequence that Brings about the Changes: Temperance to The Devil

It’s no accident that The Tower follows The Devil and Temperance in the Major Arcana. These three form a powerful triad of transformation.

In Temperance, we glimpse balance, grace, and divine harmony. The angel pours water between two cups in defiance of gravity, blending what seems impossible into something whole.

In order to get to this point in our Journey, we have had to face ourselves. We’ve been begging our Guides and Angels to reveal to us the magic of the Universe. When we get to Temperance, our wish may be granted. 

The name “Temperance” is not only about balance - it is also a reference to the word "temper." Tempering is a process of heating ferrous metals in a forge to achieve greater usefulness. 
Now, imagine that there is an "ethereal blade smith" who can take our essence and create an etheric blade for us to wield for the highest of spiritual purposes: healing, protecting the weak, etc.  The process of tempering is excruciating; we burn and bend and are pounded, again and again but we believe that it will be worth all of the effort. Eventually, finally, this step is finished. 

Once we have our “etheric blade” in hand, the next question is what will we do with it? That answer will begin to fashion what will be our next lesson. 

The point of the spiritual tempering process is to make our spirit less brittle, more flexible and over all, infinitely stronger. It is not meant to break us. It is a cleansing and healing experience, which may be painful - but which allow us to hold more of the Creator's Light. 

At this stage, the soul has touched the sacred and seen its own light—but with so much power readily available, it’s easy to forget humility. When we start to believe that we are the light rather than vessels for it, imbalance begins to creep in. 

Temperance teaches balance — the blending of spirit and matter, the alchemy of opposites... Here is when we are tempted to believe that we’ve achieved spiritual perfection. We begin to think, “I have all of the answers now.”
From that illusion, we can slip easily into a dangerous delusion and soon after, we meet The Devil. We are disgusted with ourselves for misusing the etheric sword, made from our very essence. In our despair, we remake the sword into chains that bind us, feeling unworthy to hold such a beautiful and powerful object ever again. 

These are the chains of ego, obsession, and fear that hold us. The power we once used to heal or create begins to imprison us. We chase pleasure, control, or certainty, forgetting that the chains are loose and that we could remove them at any time.

 The Devil is where our desires, fears, and compulsions chain us to the material. We lose sight of compassion and fall into self-indulgence or despair.

The Devil is not an external enemy—it is our attachment to illusions, to the things we believe we cannot live without.

These two energies prepare the way for The Tower. The Tower follows the Devil, in order to break those chains and burn away the delusion. It forces the awakening we resisted; what we would not release willingly, the lightning releases for us.

A Mirror for Our Time

The Tower rises high on a mountaintop, struck by lightning from above. Fire bursts from its crown; figures tumble through the air, abandoning their false refuge.

The image is shocking for a reason—it represents the collapse of structures that can no longer sustain truth. Structures we thought unshakable — political, social, economic, and spiritual — are trembling. Many people feel lost, angry, or afraid.

We all build Towers. They might be belief systems, relationships, habits, or cultural values. Often, we build them to feel safe, to rise above fear or uncertainty. But what we create as a sanctuary can easily become a prison. We decorate its walls with our certainties, feed its foundation with our unexamined fears, and call it sacred. The problem is, what lives at the top is not the Divine—it’s a small, frightened version of ourselves pretending to be godlike, the now invisible chains of our past mistakes still holding us tightly. 

Some cling even harder to their old beliefs when The Tower begins to shake; others try to hide from the change or lash out in fear. But the Tower’s purpose is not punishment — it’s liberation, showing us what must fall so something truer can rise.

Right now, the world is living through a Tower moment. The fire reveals the cracks, the lightning illuminates the truth, and the collapse makes space for what’s next.
It breaks open the false sanctuaries we’ve mistaken for truth. The process, like tempering, can feel unbearable and we hold tight to what’s familiar, even when it’s harming us. Many of us stay in the Tower until the fire is at our feet, and only then do we leap.

The Tower’s energy is collective as well as personal. Societies, too, build towers—of hierarchy, of fear, of unquestioned belief—and every so often, the lightning of change must strike. These are the moments in history when systems collapse and new ways of seeing must emerge. It’s frightening, yes. But it’s also necessary.

When I teach about The Tower, I tell my students that the destruction it brings is a kind of grace. It tears down what we refuse to release, forcing us to see clearly. The Tower’s fall makes space for the Star’s arrival. In that sense, every collapse contains the seed of transformation.

The Tower energy asks us to stop fighting reality—and each other—and begin rebuilding with awareness. It reminds us that what we create next depends on our consciousness — on whether we rebuild from fear, or from love.

The Star: The Light After the Darkness

When The Tower falls, it’s not the end of the story. The next card, The Star, shines quietly over the ruins. After The Tower falls, the dust settles, and a light appears in the darkness.

The Star is the symbol of renewal, hope, and gentle healing. On this card, a woman kneels by a pool, pouring water both onto the earth and into the stream. She is human now—not an angel—but her vulnerability is sacred. The sky above her is filled with stars; the largest is Venus, the Star of Love. It is in this light of love that we find calm and the clarity of truth.

The Star represents hope, healing, and renewal. In the card, the woman gives freely, trusting that what she pours out will return. She is the Soul, stripped bare, at peace with her vulnerability. 

The Star reminds us that even in ruin, there is beauty. Hope is not naïve—it’s courageous. It takes strength to believe in life again when the world feels broken. But this is where the true rebuilding begins: in the tender act of believing that light still exists, and that we can participate in its return.

When I teach about The Tower, I tell my students that the destruction it brings is a kind of grace. It tears down what we refuse to release, forcing us to see clearly. The Tower’s fall makes space for the Star’s arrival. In that sense, every collapse contains the seed of transformation.

The Star is the moment we realize we can and will begin again. We may be bruised, but we are awake — and the rubble around us becomes the foundation for something wiser, kinder, and more real. 

The Choice Before Us

We are living through one of those collective Tower moments. The structures of our world—social, political, environmental, spiritual—are trembling. It’s easy to feel powerless or cynical, to believe that greed and fear will always win. But the deeper message of The Tower is that change, however painful, clears the way for something new.

Yes, the Tower is falling: personally and collectively. We can cling to the debris and stay trapped in fear — or we can leap into the unknown and trust the process of change. If we choose awareness over denial, compassion over blame, courage over despair, we can participate in building a better foundation for the future. The stones of the old Tower can become the bricks of something more honest and humane.

When the world feels like it’s falling apart, The Tower reminds us that even in destruction, there is purpose — and after every fall, there is always a Star waiting to rise.

We can see The Star’s light shining when we are willing to look up from the rubble. This is not naïve optimism. It’s the courage to look at the destruction and still choose compassion — to rebuild with open eyes and open hearts.

The Tower reminds us that hope is not denial. Hope is not a luxury. It’s an act of defiance, a sacred duty. Hope is the refusal to let fear have the final word.

Author’s Note

The Tarot, to me, is more than a tool for reading cards — like crystal skulls, Tarot is a spiritual tool to help us to remember who we really are. It's so easy to get caught up in the anxiety of daily life and forget that we are spirits living in a physical body for a relatively short time.

What is happening around us looks catastrophic — and it is — but there is truth in this destruction. The Tower represents the end of something false, the collapse of illusions that kept us feeling safe but small.

Our “towers” may be a belief system, a way of life, an identity, a relationship, or even a worldview. It is anything we’ve built to feel powerful, righteous, or protected. So much of what I teach is about learning to see ourselves and others with compassion, instead of fear. The cards remind us that we are already worthy, already capable, already enough — even in the middle of life’s chaos. 

If these reflections spoke to you, I hope you’ll keep exploring with me. Through my writings and classes, I share ways to meet life’s changes with courage, compassion, love—and even laughter. Wherever you are on your path, be gentle with yourself and remember in times of uncertainty, look to the light of hope.

With love and laughter,
Sherry

My new , in depth Tarot class begins on November 13. For more info email Sherry’s Daughter, Jaimee Whitfield: SynergySkullEvents@gmail.com
Or send a FB message to Synergy’s FB page: @SynergyCrystalSkull   (Please give her a day or so to answer – she’s working another job that’s 12 hours a day, 6 days a week!) 

A complete list of current classes:
https://www.crystal-skulls.com/pages/www-bluestartraders-com-1