January 6, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Falling Tower
A Tarot reading of 9-11
By Tonia Shoumatoff
"If only men could see that almost all that they know consists of the ruins of destroyed towers, perhaps they would cease to build them. "&emdash;P.D. Ouspensky
With the fall of the World Trade Center 18 months ago, it seems that America has pulled the Tower card from the cosmic tarot deck that resides in the collective unconscious of humanity.
The constant repetition of the image of the destruction of the Twin Towers that was so pervasive throughout the media after 9-11 is perhaps symbolic of an unseen process that is happening in the psyche of America and the world. Those images have definitely had a powerful transformative effect on everyone who has seen them. National confidence has eroded because there is an intuitive sense that something more than the Twin Towers has collapsed. In the Tarot, knocking down the tower represents the catastrophic failure of old structures that need to change. Perhaps the fall of the Twin Towers signals the necessary destruction of our materialistic, patriarchal value system. Marge Piercy commented in her collection of poems, "Laying down the Tower", that the tower knocked over becomes the communal longhouse, the quintessential Native American structure where the six nations came together in ceremonial cooperation. The longhouse can represent the process that our power structures need to embrace to restructure their stance in the world after the devastating collapse of one of America's major symbols, the Twin Towers. The structures seemed to be a phallic image of our national arrogance when they were erected, too tall, too spectacular, almost begging to be attacked the way little boys will gleefully knock down a stack of blocks that is dangerously high.
In the Major Arcana we see a tower being struck by a zigzag bolt of lightning emanating from the sun. The explosion knocks off the crown of the tower and causes the figures of men and women to plummet to their destruction. Fire, smoke and flames are seen billowing out of the windows and inside the structure of the tower. Traditionally writers have associated this card with the destruction of the Tower of Babel, the Fall of Atlantis, or God's vengeance on Sodom and Gomorrah. It has often been interpreted as the punishment for pride. Also, the Tower card follows the Devil card, which represents the risks of becoming too entangled in matter and ego. Values based only on a materialistic viewpoint are inherently unstable. The lightning represents the sudden flash of illumination about the power of spirit to create change; if when lightning strikes we cling to ideas that no longer work for us, unexpected events and disasters may force us to make a major shift in our perception of reality.
The Tower also represents attitudes that are resistant to change, so perhaps we should be asking ourselves, what in our culture is resistant to destruction? As the Taoists so aptly say, "the stick that won't bend must break."
If we resist forces beyond our control, our lives can be 'turned upside down' by cataclysm. Cosmic energy in its roughest form is an unavoidable element of creation. And this cosmic change can be terrible and abrupt, causing hardship, misfortune, and the loss of security. Other names for the Tower card are "The Struck Tower", "The House of God", "War" and "The Fire from Heaven." Interpretive readings of the card on a personal level associate it with danger, collapse, lost conceptual plans, sudden death and demolition of old beliefs. As one Tarot writer has said on the Internet: "When this happens we must react with hope rather than fear. The highest truths can now be realized."
President George Bush recently said; "Every terrorist act is aimed at destroying our lifestyle." But he doesn't ask what parts of that lifestyle may be false, empty and soulless. Nor are the power-mongers in our society questioning why 66 percent of the world's resources should be used to accommodate 4 percent of the world's most affluent people (according to Jeremy Rifkin's latest figures.) The values that America promotes of hyper-consumerism are leaving people feeling bereft spiritually. "When you are not listened to, and you don't have a community or a place that you feel you really belong…the psyche of the person is disempowered, making the person vulnerable to consumerism and all the things that come along with it," says Sonbofu Some, an African woman writer from Burkina Faso.
The disenfranchisement of teenagers which leads to the rage we have been seeing in our schools has a lot to do with the fact young people feel that they have been reduced to ciphers and consumers in our society. To be accepted, they feel compelled to wear brand names. Without being given a meaningful way of finding their purpose in the world or listening for a "spirit calling" as teenagers in native traditions were able to do through initiation rites, our youth "wander into the unknown territory of adulthood and get wounded" as Sonbofu Some remarks. The initiation rites of young people in native cultures was followed by a long period of mentoring from elders who were able to pass on their wisdom and knowledge, unlike the disempowered elders of our tribes.
Statistics show that many more Americans die of heart attacks, sitting on their couches, watching TV shows that leave them feeling empty and eating junk food that makes them obese than there are people killed by terrorist attacks. But because the 'lifestyle' which President Bush touts as being so wonderful is in fact so empty, people buy things and eat compulsively to fill that emptiness. Malnutrition affects many people around the world but many people in our society suffer from positive malnutrition, a condition caused by eating empty calories that do not truly nourish the body. Many people actually eat out of a spiritual hunger. In many third world countries there may be more physical deprivation than in this country, yet there is a vitality in people's lives that you can see reflected in their eyes. When you look in people's eyes in this country you often see a blankness or an underlying deep depression. There seems to be no real spirit in our mass culture and people are suffering because of it.
It is interesting that historically it is the men within the power structure who are fighting to keep the status quo and the women who are more able to adapt to change. During the three-year "Siege of Leningrad" in Russia during World War II women were able to devise long-range survival strategies whereas the men who initially fought off the external problems were less able to draw on internal resources to survive in the long run (The Siege of Leningrad, Harrison Salisbury).
In the famous movie about the imbalances of modern life, Koyaanisqatsi, Francis Ford Coppola depicts images of fire spewing out of an industrial tower and ashes raining down from the sky. The word "koyaanisqatsi" in Hopi means "crazy life, life out of balance, life disintegrating or life that calls for another way of living." There is an apocalyptic sequence of buildings crumbling and collapsing into rubble, empty buildings with broken windows, bridges collapsing and planes in a mirage-like haze. We see images of barren city structures crumbling to the ground, gaze up at glass towers, and watch explosions throughout the movie. Human beings are reduced to a robot-like existence riding up elevators, playing video games, marching along crowded sidewalks and driving through clover overpasses. At the end of the film we read the Hopi prediction that "containers of ashes will be thrown from the sky causing the land to burn and the ocean to boil" and that "near the day of purification there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky." Perhaps the deep psychic pain, emotional devastation and personal grief we have collectively experienced as a nation in the aftermath of 9-11 will catalyze an awareness of how basic cultural assumptions need to shift in order that we may truly fashion a future in which negotiate with other peoples as respected equals rather than as a dominant supremacy. Instead of looking down our noses at third world countries maybe we can discover the important human values we can learn from people who have learned to survive under conditions of material deprivation.
One way for us to open to each other within a space that emphasizes equality rather that dualism is to rediscover the possibilities inherent for connecting people within a circle or a spiral. Ancient and native peoples have long used circular space such as the kiva, the earth lodge and Stonehenge. These structures gave an inherent respect for earth energies and many women's groups meet in a circle today which has inspired the individual women to realize the unceasing possibilities within themselves and to become powerful both within and outside of the circle to effect change. Being in circle with one another implies that we see life as a changing, evolving process and recognize that, as we move into a labyrinthine journey with each other, we understand that many structures which come into being must then pass away and we don't get stuck in one form. We come to recognize that the old structures that we have created often need to be abandoned or torn down in order to make way for new growth. Evolution happens when we grow as individuals. It is only when we recognize the turning of the wheel within our collective karmic destiny that we become open to the joint co-creation of a new phase of our existence -- together.
Tonia Shoumatoff is Tonia Shoumatoff is a writer,
producer and media specialist who has worked extensively in
radio, television, film, print and events production. An
American of Ukrainian descent, she has made several trips to
Ukraine. Her organization brings Ukraininan children for
visits to the US to get a break from the radioactive
poisoning there and to experience our country. She is
renovating a school built by her great grandmother in
Ukraine. Tonia is a member of Millionth Circle.
Another article on the tower symbol by Margaret Starbird may
be found at
http://www.magdalene.org/twintowers.htm