The Tower isn’t a tragedy; it’s an audit.

The Tower is a funny card. And not haha funny—more like peculiar funny.

The imagery alone is enough to tell you that you’re probably not having a great time. Most of us don't look at a building engulfed in flames, watching it collapse as bodies plummet toward the pavement, and think to ourselves, "Sweet." We know instinctively that we shouldn't be psyched about it.

But what’s actually happening here is a lot more nuanced than people think. The symbolism is obvious on the surface: destruction, wreckage, a total fall from grace. But we have to look closer to see what exactly is crumbling and what that collapse means for any survivor left standing in the rubble.

The Tower is the jump-scare of the Tarot, but the horror isn't in the fire—it’s in the clarity. We take a defensive stance because we know, deep down, that we’ve been living in a house of cards. That visceral dread is your ego realizing it just lost its hiding spot. The Tower doesn't kill you; it just refuses to let you keep lying to yourself.

If the sight of this card makes you sick to your stomach, it’s usually because you’ve been working overtime to keep a structure standing that was never meant to hold your weight. You’ve been ignoring the cracks in the foundation, pretending the rot in the walls is just "character," and praying that the truth doesn't finally decide to show up and demand a reckoning.

The Tower doesn't destroy things that are solid; it only dismantles what was built on a lie.

Astrologically, we’re talking about Mars and Uranus energy. It’s a violent, sudden, glitch in the Matrix kind of vibe. It’s not a gentle request for change; it’s a fucking eviction notice.

Symbolically, the Tower is the structure of your life—your ego, your "ride or die" friendships, the way you’ve framed your entire reality. A Tower is strong. But is it sturdy? The Tower only falls if the foundation is trash. If you built your life on a lie, or on someone else’s approval, or on a "bestie" who actually resents your guts, the Tower should fall. It has to.

This is the part most people overlook, but it’s the most psychonautic element of the whole thing. Look at the figures falling from the building. In the most honest depictions, they’re wearing masks. As they plummet, those masks are ripped away. That’s the truth being exposed.

The Tower isn't just about losing your job or a breakup; it’s about the death of the Persona. We spend so much energy upholding this curated version of ourselves—the "loyal one," the "good daughter," the "unbothered friend." We use these masks (and excuses like "naivety") to pretend we aren't being toxic or that we aren't being treated like garbage.

When the lightning hits, you don't get to be a character anymore. You hit the ground as your raw, authentic, ugly-crying self. The mask falls, the lie is exposed, and for the first time in years, you’re actually real. And you’re also in a whole lot of real pain.

In the Tower, the mask is not taken off by choice. It is a forced demasking. Usually in an abrupt, and sometimes violent, manner (Mars and Uranus, remember?).

We all build these "Personas" to navigate the world. We build them out of a need to be loved, a fear of being too much or too little, or a desire to keep the peace. But over time, the mask stops being something we wear and starts being something we inhabit. We start to believe our own bullshit. We tell ourselves we’re "just being nice" when we’re actually being abused. We tell ourselves we’re "just being loyal" when we’re actually enabling a narcissist.

The Tower is the moment the weight of the mask becomes heavier than the benefit of the lie.

When the lightning hits, the mask doesn't gently slide off; it is torn off. This is why the fall is so terrifying. Without the mask, you lose your protection.

When the mask falls alongside you in the rubble, you are forced to make eye contact with your own reflection in the ruins. You see the parts of yourself you’ve spent years masking over—your anger, your resentment, your complicity.

This is why some people would rather die in the fire than jump from the Tower. To jump is to admit: "I am not who I said I was. This friendship wasn't what I thought it was. I have been living a fiction."

To the ego, that admission feels like death. The ego would rather maintain the unstable foundation and keep the mask glued to its face than survive the fall and have to start over as a nobody. Or maybe worse, as someone who was wrong. But for the psychonaut, for the seeker, this fall is the only way to reach the ground. You can’t build a real life while you’re suspended in mid-air, clutching a mask of who you used to be.

The fall is the only way back to the earth. And the earth is the only place where you can finally stand on your own two feet.

So it may not be the most hated card in tarot… But it is the most feared card. It is the villain of tarot. So, who is it that is most afraid of pulling The Tower? Here is how I see it- The Tower is a litmus test for psychological maturity. The people who fear this card aren't actually afraid of bad luck. They’re afraid of acknowledgment.

They’d rather live in a mess they recognize than admit the mess exists. To them, the unstable foundation is something they’ve learned to live with—like a floor that creaks, they just learn where not to step. They fear the Tower because it forces them to look at the rot they've been ignoring. For people who have built their entire identity on a lie, having to be honest is more terrifying than staying in a burning building.

In the Tarot, The Tower is the 16th card. Numerology teaches us that we dont have to stop after looking at the number. We can go even deeper and look at the friction inside of the number.

In the Tarot, The Tower is the 16th card. Numerology teaches us that we don’t have to stop after looking at the number. We can go even deeper and look at the friction inside of the number.

The 1 is the Self- the Ego, the “I am

The 1 is the Self- the Ego, the “I am.”

The 6 is the vibration of The Lovers. It’s about our attachments, our comforts, and the perfect little nests we build.

When you put them together into the 16, you get a Karmic Debt number. It represents the Ego (1) getting way too comfortable and codependent with its structures (6). It’s the vibration of someone who has mistaken their “Castle” for their “Soul”. The 16 is a warning: You’ve built a prison out of your comforts. The lighting has to strike to break the 1 and the 6 apart, because as long as they’re fused, you aren’t growing. You’re just decorating your cell.

Reducing to the 7: The Seeker’s Reward

But we don’t have to stop there. We can even take this a level deeper. We can reduce the number 16 even further (1+6=7) to get the number 7.

The 7 is the vibration of the Seeker, the Analyst, and the Psychonaut. It’s the number of someone who isn't interested in surface-level bullshit. The 7 wants the “Why”. It wants the Truth.

When your Tower falls, you are being forcibly moved from the 16 (the messy, attached, masked version of yourself) into the 7 (the observant, independent, and enlightened version of yourself).

The 7 is the person standing in the rubble who isn't crying anymore. Instead, they are looking at the bricks and finally understanding how the building was put together. They are analyzing the rot. They are seeing the "masks" for what they were. The 7 is the wisdom you get only after the ego-death of the 16.

You lose the castle, but you gain the perspective. And in the long run, the perspective is the only thing that’s actually yours to keep.

The Tower doesn’t leave you with nothing. It leaves you with the Two of Wands, and more importantly, it leaves you on solid ground.

When you’re inside the Tower, your horizon is limited by the four walls of your own delusions. You can only see what the "mask" allows you to see. But when the walls come down, the view is suddenly 360 degrees. It’s terrifying because there’s no longer a roof over your head to protect you from the vastness of the universe, but it’s liberating because you are finally, for the first time, standing on the Earth.

The Two of Wands is the energy of the Architect. It’s the card of a person holding a globe, looking out from their ruins at a world that hasn't been mapped yet. The Tower cleared the field so you can finally decide where you actually want to go, rather than staying stuck in a burning building out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to a lie. You aren't homeless in the rubble; you are finally free to build a foundation that can actually hold the weight of your soul.

If you’re standing in the wreckage of your own Tower moment, don't rush to rebuild. Sit in the debris. Look at the masks scattered around you. Use these prompts to explore the architecture of your own ego and what was actually being held up by those falling walls.

Identify a structure in your life (a relationship, a habit, a self-belief) that you knew was unstable but tried to protect anyway.

In Transpersonal Psychology, we look at the 'Subpersonalities' we create to survive.

The Tower often reveals our Shadow—the parts of ourselves we’ve pushed into the basement.