The Tower in Tarot: Meaning, History, and Jewelry Symbolism of Arcanum 16

Lena received the layoff notice on a Friday at 5 PM. Not in a meeting room with HR. Not in a conversation with her manager. A corporate email with the subject line "Organizational Restructuring" and the first word: "Unfortunately..." Eight years at the same company. She read the message three times because her brain refused to process what was written. Then she went outside, drove home, and sat for two hours holding her phone, unable to call anyone.

This is the Tower. Suddenness is the essential condition. Because it's sudden, it operates differently than all other misfortunes. When you're expecting something, your psyche prepares itself. When you're not expecting it, it never has time. And that's exactly why the card is called what it is: not "Crisis," not "Loss," but The Tower—a tall, closed structure that seemed impregnable—burning.

But this is only the first day of the story. Three months later, Lena opened a project she'd been thinking about for years but "not now, not now." It's possible she would have waited another eight years if not for that email.

In the Tarot system, the Tower stands between the Devil (XV) and the Star (XVII). This is no accident. The Devil represents chains that people voluntarily wear: habits, illusions, dependencies, beliefs that have become obsolete but feel like part of oneself. The Tower is the lightning that breaks all this at once. And the Star is what opens when the smoke clears.

After the Tower always comes the Star. This is a structural law of the deck.

The Tower's Place in the Arcana: XVI Between XV and XVII

The 22 Major Arcana cards in Tarot, numbered 0 to 21, form a sequence known as the "Fool's Journey." Each card represents a stage of internal or external transformation. They are not arranged arbitrarily.

The XV Arcanum—the Devil—shows a person trapped in their own illusions. In the Rider-Waite-Smith card, Adam and Eve are chained to the Devil's pedestal, but the chains are loose enough to remove. People remain captive not because they can't escape, but because they lack the will. Or they don't realize they're in a cage.

The XVI Arcanum—the Tower—is what happens when the cage collapses anyway. Sometimes it's the person's own choice, finally mustering courage. But more often it's an external force that doesn't ask permission. Lightning strikes the tower, and everything that was held up by illusions stops holding.

The XVII Arcanum—the Star—is the first breath after destruction. The sky has cleared. Illusions have burned away. What remains is real.

These three cards form a trilogy that Tarot researchers call one of the most intense segments of the journey: entrapment, breakthrough, liberation.

An important detail: the Tower comes after the Devil for a reason. Destruction arrives where accumulation has occurred. The longer illusions are maintained, the stronger the impact when they crumble. Crisis rarely emerges from nowhere—it ripens in silence while people pretend everything is fine.

The Card's History: From Visconti to Crowley

Visconti-Sforza: La Casa di Dio

The earliest known images of the Tower in Tarot date to the 15th century. In the Visconti-Sforza deck, created around 1450 for the Milanese ducal court, the card was called "La Casa di Dio"—the House of God. In surviving examples, a tower struck by lightning or divine fire appears, with human figures falling below.

The name is significant. The "House of God" in medieval understanding was not a cozy dwelling but a place from which there is no escape from Fate. When God decides to destroy—destruction comes regardless of human will. This is an important starting point: the card was originally interpreted as intervention by a higher power, not personal catastrophe.

Marseille Tarot: La Maison Dieu

In the Marseille tradition, which solidified by the 17th century, the card retained its name "La Maison Dieu"—a literal translation. The iconography became more schematic: tower, lightning, two falling figures. No embellishments, minimal detail. In Marseille cards, structure matters more than narrative.

French craftsmen who produced cards for trade throughout Europe fixed this image in the form that became standard for the next century and a half. La Maison Dieu became one of the most recognizable cards in any deck precisely because of the Marseille tradition: a simple vertical tower, a diagonal lightning bolt, two points representing falling figures.

Rider-Waite-Smith 1909: "The Tower"

In 1909, Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith created a deck that radically changed the visual language of Tarot and became the canon for most modern decks. Smith—a professional illustrator and Symbolist artist—saturated each card with specific details carrying specific meanings.

The Tower in her rendition became the image known today. A tall gray tower on a rocky peak. Above it—dark gray sky. A jagged lightning bolt with characteristic contours. A golden crown slips from the summit. Two figures fall headfirst on opposite sides of the tower. Along the sides—22 flames.

Waite wrote that the card means "catastrophe, end, destruction, which may be external or internal." But in his system, destruction is not an end in itself—it's a path to liberation. The Tower must fall so that what is built on illusions yields to what is genuine.

Crowley in the Thoth: "The Tower" or "War"

Aleister Crowley in his Thoth deck (1944), drawn by artist Frieda Harris, gave the card an alternative name—"War." In his interpretation, the Tower connects to Mars's battle energy and to active destruction as a creative act. Harris depicted not a static fall but an explosion process: geometric forms scatter, structure disintegrates into components.

Crowley emphasized the card's active, combative aspect. Where Waite's Tower suffers from external impact, Crowley's explodes from within. The conceptual difference is: the first is what circumstances do to us; the second is what inevitably happens when internal pressure reaches its limit.

Rider-Waite-Smith Iconography: Every Symbol Explained

The Tower on a Mountain

The Tower stands on the peak of a cliff or mountain. It is built high and, by its appearance, was constructed with the aim of impregnability. This is not a seaside cottage but a structure claiming eternity.

The tower as a symbol has a long history. Medieval fortresses and castles were built for protection and to demonstrate power. To build a high tower meant to declare: I am here, I am strong, you cannot move me. The Tower in Tarot is any construction created from pride or fear that claims to be indestructible.

Its location on a mountain strengthens this meaning: it was already high before it was built. The illusion of superiority and stability is doubled.

The Crown Falls from the Right: Loss of Power

From the tower's peak, at the moment the lightning strikes, a golden crown slips away. The direction matters: the crown falls to the right—toward the conscious, active, public side. Power not only loses its material manifestation but also loses direction—it loses what it controlled.

The crown is a symbol of power. In medieval and occult tradition, it meant supreme authority, the peak of hierarchy, connection with the divine. The crown on the tower said: this structure is sanctioned by the highest authority.

When lightning knocks the crown away, several things happen at once. Power loses its symbolic justification. The hierarchy claiming eternity reveals its temporality. Pride, which stood above all, falls first.

Some Tarot researchers read the flying crown as a change of power in the broad sense: political systems, authorities, beliefs that seemed immovable reveal their vulnerability. This isn't necessarily bad. A crown slipped from a false tower makes room for something real.

Lightning in Zigzag: Three Discharges, Three Separations

The lightning on the card is depicted not as a simple line but as a characteristic zigzag with three bends. This is a three-part discharge. In Waite's occult system, the number three symbolizes the separation of the one: thought, word, deed; beginning, middle, end; heaven, earth, humanity.

The three lightning bends mean the strike separates on three levels: external (circumstances and facts), internal (beliefs and self-image), and deep (the foundation on which everything else stood). The Tower doesn't fall from one touch—it breaks into components, each revealing its own emptiness.

In occult tradition, lightning is not simply a destructive force. It is heavenly revelation. Instantaneous, complete, without warning.

Two Falling Figures: King and Subject

Two figures fall from the tower on opposite sides. In older versions of the card, one figure is recognizable as a person wearing a crown or rich garments—a ruler or nobleman. The other is unmarked, a commoner or servant.

Both fall equally. The Tower makes no distinction of status.

This is one of the most democratic symbols in the entire deck: before catastrophe born of illusions, all are equal. The ruler who built the tower and the one who lived in it fall together. Illusion protects no one—neither those who created it nor those who believed in it.

The figures don't fall into a bottomless pit. They fall to the ground. To reality. To what actually is. This is an important observation: falling from the Tower is not an end—it is landing.

Twenty-Two Flames: The Deck Within the Card

Along the sides of the tower in the Waite card, 22 flames are depicted—the number of Major Arcana cards in the deck. This is not random. 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, 22 paths on the Tree of Life, 22 Tarot Arcana—it's all one system. The Tower contains them all.

This means: a Tower event unfolds everything in a person at once. All paths, all themes, all lessons of the deck activate simultaneously. The Tower is not a separate story—it's the point where all others intersect.

Fire here is the element of Mars, to which the Tower corresponds. This is not random decoration but an indication of planetary principle: destruction through fire, purification through flame.

Gray Sky: Between Worlds, Without Luminaries

The sky in the card is gray, almost black. There is neither sun nor moon. This is a deliberate detail: the Tower happens outside ordinary time. The sun governs conscious day; the moon governs night cycles and intuition. Here there is neither.

The person at the moment of the Tower event stands literally between worlds: the old is destroyed, the new has not yet begun. A gray sky without luminaries is a state of transitional space where familiar landmarks don't work.

This is an important contrast with the Star that follows the Tower: the Star card's sky is also night, but there are stars. Here the sky is simply dark, without luminaries. The Tower is the darkest moment before the sky clears.

The Tower of Babel: Biblical Parallels

The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 appears to many as merely a tale of divine punishment for human pride. But deeper examination reveals layers of meaning that illuminate why the Tower card became a major arcanum about transformation rather than simple catastrophe.

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." Humanity is unified—this is the starting point. Unity of language means not just communication but shared understanding of reality: common concepts, common meanings.

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The motive for building is precisely defined: not a practical goal but a reputational one. "Make us a name"—this is a project of self-assertion, building from fear of disappearing and desire to be noticed.

The Hebrew commentator Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, 1040-1105) points out something crucial that the text itself doesn't explicitly state: God doesn't say the building is bad in itself. He says: "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." The problem is not the tower—the problem is that unity directed toward a project of self-assertion is unstoppable in its destructiveness.

Some modern theologians see in the Tower of Babel story not just a warning about pride but evidence of human potential. "Nothing will be impossible for them" are God's words about people. Not condemnation but statement of fact: humanity in unity is capable of everything. The scattering of languages in this reading is not cruel punishment but a protective mechanism: humanity wasn't yet ready for such concentration of power. The diversity of cultures and languages became a condition for survival and development.

In the context of the Tarot Tower, this reads as: destruction of a single structure creates multiplicity. An illusion shatters—and reality reveals itself to be richer than it seemed.

Towers in Medieval and Renaissance Painting

Bruegel the Elder: "The Tower of Babel" 1563

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted two versions of "The Tower of Babel"—a large one (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and a smaller one (Rotterdam, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum). The large version, dated 1563, is one of the most famous tower depictions in Western painting.

Bruegel depicts the tower under construction but already clearly doomed. The lower stories are complete and imitate ancient Rome's Colosseum—Bruegel deliberately uses Roman architecture as prototype: Rome was also a Babylon in his time. Upper levels are unfinished, some constructions deformed or collapsing under their own weight.

Most interesting are the details surrounding the tower: life continues. Small boats sail across the sea, people go about their daily tasks on the quays, a king inspects the construction. The tower is gigantic, dominating—yet human life around it is small, mundane. Bruegel doesn't dramatize the catastrophe; he places it in the context of ordinariness: towers fall, life goes on.

This is a Flemish perspective on the Tower: not a cosmic tragedy but part of life's cycle. You build, it falls, you build again. Bruegel lived during religious wars and political catastrophes—he saw many towers around him.

Dürer and Gothic Towers

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) worked with the tower image differently than Bruegel. In his engravings and drawings, the tower appears as an architectural element of cityscape: Gothic spires, fortification walls, watchtowers. This is the tower as symbol of human organization and defense.

Dürer was fascinated by perspective and architectural precision—his towers are geometrically calculated, expressing order rather than chaos. But precisely because they are so perfect, the destruction of this order reads especially acutely in Dürer's work: everything built with such care can collapse from a single blow.

In his series of apocalyptic engravings from 1498, Dürer depicts the destruction of architecture as part of the end of times—tower destruction as a sign of transition to another world order. This is the Tarot Tower in late-Gothic register.

Tuscan mille torri: Towers as Power

In the Middle Ages, Italian cities, especially San Gimignano in Tuscany, were known as "cities of a thousand towers." Each noble family built a tower—the higher, the more power and prestige. In the 13th-14th centuries, San Gimignano had more than seventy towers, of which fourteen remain today.

Towers were built not from military necessity—a castle could be fortified differently. They were built as visible expression of status: I am higher than my neighbor. Literally. These buildings were stone "names" written into the city skyline.

This tradition—the tower as announcement of self—stands behind the card's symbolism. When the Crown falls in the Tarot Tower, it's a direct reference to medieval Italian towers: the crown of power, raised high so everyone would see it—is the first to be lost in the strike.

Lightning in World Mythology

Zeus and the Thunderbolt: Lightning as Order

Zeus, the supreme god of the Greek Olympus, wielded the thunderbolt—keraunos. This was not simply a weapon but an attribute of supreme authority: the ability to strike with lightning distinguished the king of gods from all others.

Zeus's lightning was not arbitrary. It came where cosmic order was violated. Hubris—arrogant pride, a human or god overstepping their assigned boundaries—triggered the lightning as a system response. Bellerophon tried to reach Olympus on Pegasus—Zeus struck him with lightning. Not from cruelty but as guardian of boundaries between human and divine.

Prometheus stole fire for humanity—he received eternal punishment, his liver devoured daily by an eagle, for three thousand years. The fire was divine property. Humanity wasn't meant to have it. Yet Prometheus's defiance was also recognized: by some accounts, Heracles eventually freed him, and his gift enabled human civilization.

This duality in mythological understanding of lightning is important: it is both punishment and revelation. The Tower card contains this tension: destruction and liberation, loss and gift.

Indra and Vritra: Releasing the Waters

In Hindu mythology, Indra wields the vajra, the thunderbolt. His greatest battle was against Vritra, the serpent of drought and stagnation. When Indra struck Vritra with the vajra, the serpent broke, and waters—held in captivity—flowed freely again, bringing fertility to the land.

This is a different tone than Zeus: the strike is not about punishment but about breaking through blockage. It's about release. The waters were never meant to be captive. The strike is not cruel; it's liberating what should flow.

In the Tarot Tower context, this suggests another layer: what appears to be destruction may be the breaking of an unnatural constraint. The person falls from the tower, but they also fall toward earth, toward reality, toward what can actually nourish.

Thor and Mjolnir: Thunder as Protection

The Norse god Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, was not primarily a weapon of conquest but of protection and restoration of order. When wielded, it always returned to Thor's hand. It could rebuild what it destroyed.

This is yet another mythological tonality: the hammer-lightning that repairs. It breaks false structures, yes, but in order to rebuild true ones. The Thunder god is not arbitrary; he is the keeper of cosmic stability.

All these mythological traditions—Greek, Hindu, Norse—agree on one thing: lightning is not random. It targets what violates order, what oppresses wrongly, what must be freed. In human psychology, this maps directly onto the Tower: the event that feels like random catastrophe is often a response to something that needed to break.

Jungian Analysis: Ego-Death as the Tower

Carl Jung understood the psyche as a system naturally moving toward wholeness, which he called individuation. Part of this process involves the death of the ego—not the small self's actual death, but the dissolution of its defensive structures, its illusions about who it is.

The Tower, in Jungian terms, is ego-death. The self you thought you were—built on defenses, persona (the mask you show the world), complexes—suddenly collapses. This is agonizing because the ego has invested enormous energy in maintaining this structure. Losing it feels like losing everything.

But beneath the ego structure is the Self—Jung's term for the deeper, truer organizing center of the psyche. The Self doesn't judge, doesn't defend, doesn't perform. It simply is. And it contains far more capacity for relationship, creativity, and authenticity than the ego alone.

The Tower's lightning, in this reading, is the unconscious breaking through. What has been repressed, denied, or ignored suddenly becomes impossible to ignore. A person might spend years in a job they hate because the ego structure of "I am successful" depends on it. When the job is lost, the structure collapses—and for the first time, the possibility of genuine choice appears.

This is why the Star follows the Tower: after the defensive structures dissolve, there is clarity. What you actually want, what actually matters to you, becomes visible. The illusions that seemed like reality are recognized as illusions.

Psychology of Post-Traumatic Growth

Modern trauma psychology reveals something remarkable: many people who experience severe adversity report not just recovery but genuine growth. This phenomenon is called post-traumatic growth (PTG).

Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, pioneers in PTG research, identified five dimensions of post-traumatic growth:

1. Personal Strength - A person discovers capacities they didn't know they had. Surviving something they thought would destroy them reveals previously hidden resilience.

2. Relating to Others - Relationships often deepen. Having faced mortality or serious loss, a person's priorities clarify. They become more authentic, less concerned with social performance.

3. Life Appreciation - Small things gain meaning. A meal, a conversation, sunlight. What was taken for granted becomes precious.

4. New Possibilities - Life opens directions previously unseen. The person who lost their career discovers they were never meant to have that career. The relationship that ended makes room for a healthier one.

5. Spiritual Change - Not necessarily religious, but an expanded sense of meaning, of connection to something larger than personal ego concerns.

The Tower card appears frequently in readings of people at this threshold: the breaking point where they might descend into despair or ascend into genuine transformation.

What determines the outcome? Partially circumstance, but significantly the person's interpretation of the event. Those who interpret the Tower as "random cruelty" tend toward bitterness. Those who interpret it as "necessary breaking of what didn't work" tend toward growth.

This is not "positive thinking"—a dangerous and shallow idea that ignores genuine suffering. It's a recognition that meaning is partly constructed by consciousness. The Tower happened. Whether it becomes a tragedy or a transformation depends partly on how it is understood.

The Tower in Literature and Film

King Lear and Lear on the Heath

Shakespeare's "King Lear" is perhaps the most explicit Tower narrative in Western literature. King Lear's power structure—his identity as king, his relationship with his daughters, his sense of order and control—all collapse simultaneously. He is stripped of his kingdom, betrayed by his daughters, abandoned.

The heath where he wanders is the Tower's landscape: gray, elementally hostile, without human shelter or comfort. He goes mad. But in his madness, he achieves a kind of clarity: he recognizes Gloucester's suffering as equal to his own, sees that human beings are fundamentally vulnerable and dependent on connection. He becomes, in the end, more fully human.

Dickens's Great Expectations

Pip's story follows the Tower arc: he builds an identity structure ("I will become a gentleman") based on illusion (Miss Havisham's manipulated expectations, his misinterpretation of who his benefactor is). When the truth emerges—his great expectations came from a convict, not Miss Havisham, and the woman he idolizes is emotionally dead—his entire self-image collapses.

He must rebuild from the ground, and who he becomes is more genuine, more capable of actual love, than the ambitious Pip of illusion.

Modern Film: Inside Out, Eternal Sunshine, Anomalisa

Pixar's "Inside Out" depicts the psychological Tower in the character of Riley: her move to a new city shatters her sense of identity and safety. Core memories—what held her sense of self together—no longer fit. She experiences profound disconnection.

The resolution comes not by restoring the old identity but by allowing emotional complexity. Sadness, which was previously excluded, is integrated. The new identity that emerges contains multitudes.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" shows a Tower in reverse: the protagonist tries to have the Tower un-happen by erasing memories of his lost relationship. But the film suggests this is a mistake. The pain contains truth. The only way forward is through it, not around it.

The Tower in Readings: How to Work with It

When the Tower appears in a Tarot reading, the common immediate reaction is fear. The card has a formidable reputation. But experienced readers understand that context and positioning determine meaning.

The Tower as Timing

In many readings, the Tower indicates timing: a change is coming, or is already underway. The structure you've been maintaining will not hold. This can be a warning (prepare yourself) or a description (this is what's already happening).

If the Tower appears in a position representing outcome or future, it often means: whatever you're building or relying on needs to collapse before anything better can emerge. This is not punishment. It's mercy.

The Tower as Necessary

Beginners sometimes ask: "Can I change my reading? I got the Tower; I don't want that outcome." The answer is always: the Tower's structure wasn't stable anyway. The question is not whether it will fall, but when, and whether you'll be aware enough to use the falling as an opportunity for genuine change.

The Tower Reversed

In reversed position, the Tower can indicate:

• A tower that should fall but hasn't (lingering in a situation that's become unhealthy)
• Fear of necessary change, clinging to the familiar
• A past catastrophe you're still processing
• Recovery from the Tower experience

A reversed Tower is not "good news"—it's a sign that denial or avoidance is operating. The necessary breaking is being delayed, which usually means it will be more violent when it finally comes.

Tower Combinations

The Tower between the Devil and the Star is powerful, but how it combines with surrounding cards refines its meaning.

Tower + Eight of Swords: You're trapped and about to be freed. The swords (mental confusion, overthinking) will fall away with the structure they support.

Tower + The Hermit: The breaking is propelling you inward, toward solitude and deep self-examination. This is not isolation; it's retreat to source.

Tower + The World: Completion is coming through destruction. Something is ending so something whole can begin.

Jewelry with Tower Symbols

Wearing symbols from the Tower card doesn't mean inviting catastrophe. Rather, it represents alignment with the principle the card teaches: readiness to release what no longer serves, trust in the process of necessary transformation.

Lightning Bolt Pendants

Lightning has been worn as a protective symbol across cultures. In some traditions, it represents divine protection (you are under the watch of higher powers). In others, it represents the ability to penetrate illusion, to strike at falsehood directly.

A silver lightning bolt pendant can serve as a reminder that what appears random or chaotic may have its own kind of order. That sudden change, while frightening, can be clarifying.

Mjolnir: Thor's Hammer

The Norse hammer, associated with Thunder, is often worn by those undergoing major life changes. It represents not destructive power but the power to restore order through breaking what doesn't serve.

In modern wear, Mjolnir has become a symbol of resilience, of trusting that even if you break, you can be repaired and become stronger.

Rune Jewelry

The Algiz rune (resembling an upside-down peace sign) represents protection and strength after challenge. The Othala rune represents the heritage that remains when everything material is stripped away—the essential nature that survives any catastrophe.

Wearing these runes suggests: I have survived what seemed unsurvivable. I have discovered the core of myself that can't be destroyed.

Phoenix Symbolism

The phoenix rising from ashes is the Tower completed: destruction absolutely total, but resurrection absolute as well. A phoenix pendant says: I don't just survive endings. I transform through them. I emerge renewed.

Card Combinations: Detailed Analysis

The Tower doesn't exist in isolation. How it combines with surrounding cards determines precise meaning.

Tower + Devil

This sequence shows the causal relationship explicitly. The Devil's chains finally break. What was self-imposed (the Devil's captivity) becomes external collapse (the Tower). The person usually discovers that the break they feared was the only way out of the trap they'd become comfortable with.

Tower + Star

This is the most hopeful sequence in the deck. Yes, collapse occurs. But it's precisely the collapse necessary for genuine hope to emerge. The person is forced to release false hopes (I'll be happy if... I'll finally feel secure when...) and encounter real sources of meaning.

Tower + Three of Swords

Both cards involve separation and pain. But the Three of Swords is mental anguish often self-inflicted or prolonged by overthinking. The Tower is clean breaking. Together they suggest that actual separation (Tower) will end the mental torture (Three of Swords).

Tower + Four of Pentacles

This is a warning. The Four of Pentacles holds tightly to what is. The Tower will force release. The reading suggests: you're gripping too tightly. Something has to give. Better to release consciously than to be forced.

Tower + Six of Cups

Loss of innocence meeting childhood memory. The Tower destroys something precious, often something you thought protected you. The Six of Cups asks: what from your past are you defending? What childhood wound is keeping you building structures that can't last?

Card Divinity: The Tower's Purpose

Some Tarot traditions personify the Major Arcana as steps on a spiritual path. In this view, the Tower has a specific spiritual function: it is the guard at the threshold between the personal self and the greater Self.

Many spiritual traditions speak of a necessary "dark night of the soul"—a period where all the props of personal identity and security are removed. Sufi poets describe it. Christian mystics describe it. Buddhist traditions describe similar phases of practice where all conceptual understanding falls away.

The Tower is this threshold guardian. It says: you cannot advance into genuine spiritual growth while maintaining these illusions about who you are. The structure must fall.

From the Tower's perspective, even the greatest human achievements—success, status, relationships—are illusions if they're built on a false foundation. The Tower clears the ground so genuine growth becomes possible.

Conclusion

The Tower Arcanum doesn't promise comfort. It promises truth, clarity, and the liberation that comes from finally releasing what was already broken. It promises that after the most frightening fall comes stable ground.

Lena's story—the sudden firing that became the opening to genuine work—is typical of the Tower's movement. The catastrophe looked like pure loss. It was also pure necessity. Only that loss made room for the thing she was genuinely meant to do.

In the deck, the Star that follows the Tower is not optimistic in a naive sense. It is realistic hope: based in what's actually true, what's actually possible, what actually nourishes. The Tower clears away what was false so the Star can shine on what's real.