Below is an excerpt from the Dark Days Tarot Guidebook by Emily Mundy:
XVI. The Tower
A bolt strikes your core, breaks your branch from the middle. What was once your ordinary personality has been electrified by the jolt of a divine nature… and this flash of intuition has severed a previous sense of self-stability. Not to worry, this destruction serves the purpose of intensified wisdom. Though the trunk may not withstand the surge, your roots will remain intact and stretch themselves to greater depths. Upright, The Tower urges you to focus less on your present circumstance and more on the larger picture. Facing right, this card illuminates ignorance relating to possible use of power; left, an opportunity to increase understanding with the destruction of a “lower” sense of self. The Tower reversed reminds you to appreciate that circumstances are cyclically reorienting and quite unlike they’ve ever been before.
Suggested prompts:
upright: divine energy; electrification; expanded picture
right: intensified sense of self; particular use of power
left: destruction of the small self; invigoration of the larger self
reversed: cyclical rebirthing of circumstance; idiosyncrasy
Sixteen is complete and utter life-changing circumstances, according to the Tarot. This card is the finger of God, attracted to vulnerability and dramatic upheaval. If this card is revealed in a reading, you have been given a unique opportunity to be honest about where you’re unnecessarily vulnerable.
This tree is dead already, and lightning strikes its crunchy core, forcing families of feathered spirits into need. Some are likely to be casualties in this inevitable end. Rain falls during the storm to dampen fire’s strife and tamper with the endlessness of fire’s unheeded destruction. This too shall pass.
The Tower is Mother’s strike. Now’s the time to understand how it feels to be in hot water, until the ashes settle.