The Tower, In Defense of Its Reputation
The Tower is one of the most feared cards in the Major Arcana.
It is often described as catastrophe, punishment, divine wrath, or chaos.
The Tower is not evil.
Calling it evil is like calling gravity evil, or the Sun, or entropy.
A structure collapses not because the universe hates it,
but because it cannot continue to stand in its current configuration.
The Tower appears when identity has fossilized.
When beliefs have become architecture rather than movement.
When the persona has mistaken itself for the Self.
It is painful not because it is malicious,
but because identity resists change.
Pain is the cost of updating structure.
If no collapse ever occurred, nothing would grow.
A system that never breaks is a system that never evolves.
A psyche that never shatters is a psyche that never differentiates.
The Tower is the nervous system responding to an unsustainable configuration.
It is crisis as correction.
Rupture as recalibration.
In human terms, it feels humiliating, disorienting, existential.
In structural terms, it is maintenance.
The Tower is not a villain.
It is a necessary catastrophe.
And necessity is not moral.
It is mechanical.
The card is not here to destroy meaning.
It is here to expose where meaning had become rigid.
