Valerie Sarnicole

The Tower card and 9/11

by Valerie Sarnicole

It is hard to believe how much time has passed since the tragic events of September 11th at the World Trade Center. When the event happened I was a student at the School of Visual Arts. I was swept up in watching the news accounts for the next three days. Somehow, it was very difficult to stop watching the news reports and trying to digest the enormity of the event. In an irrational way, it felt as though the more I knew, the more I might be able to understand what happened. However, collecting information doesn't necessarily lead to deep understanding. Deep understanding of such a tragedy comes with the insights you gain after going through an emotional process. The idea that we are focused on facts in the United States and not on a deeper spiritual understanding was once taught in a class I attended and it struck me as a wise assessment of an aspect of the American mentality .

In tarot, there is a card that belongs to the Major Arcana called the Tower. The Major Arcana (which translates to major secrets) are the spiritually centered cards. When you look at the traditional image of the tower in tarot, it can be a jarring image. The most traditional deck to begin learning about the tarot is called the Rider Waite deck. The image of the Tower in the Rider Waite deck shows a catastrophic event. A shocking strike of lightning causes flames to merge and the violent ejection of people from the tower. Their bodies fall helplessly and their faces show the shock of their reversal of fortune. The tower itself is still standing and yet it is built on a piercing, jagged rock. The foundation of the tower looks brittle and precarious. This archetypal image corresponds greatly with the destruction of the World Trade Center. This card seems to show the shock and the chaos of the event. However, interestingly, there is deeper meaning to the idea of being struck by lighting.

In the book, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols connects making contact with lighting with being struck by the hand of God. [1] The wonder of the symbolism of the Tower card is that although this event is full of chaos and uncertainty, there is also room for a flash of insight of immense proportions.

As I was thinking about this card and the tragedy of 9/11, I was wondering about the victims. What were their dreams? What were they struggling to achieve in their own lives? On a darker note, for those who did not survive, what kind of insights could such a dramatic event have brought to the forefront as the time sped away and hope ran out for their survival? There were voice mail messages left by the victims for their loved ones. Some of the messages left by the victims on 9/11 were full of awareness and insight. Some victims were thoughtful enough to tell their loved ones to move on with their lives. In tarot, the tower card shows a catastrophe, or a shocking event and a blinding flash of insight. Is it possible that the victims went through stages during the event? Is it possible that even at the darkest hour, the enormity of the event and their impending death could have given some of them a surprising blaze of insight into their own lives? We know they had moments of fear, horror and defeat. Yet, is it possible due to the well spring of potential in the human psyche, that there were also surprising moments of illumination? It is clear that many victims comforted and reached out to each other as much as they could from the accounts of the tragedy. The archetypal image of the tower also raises the question of whether any of the victims were able to look within to access a source of revelation, reckoning and finality. Perhaps at least one person experienced a flash of awareness of what their life gave to them and saw images and final memories of the faces of their families. The surprises and mysteries within the hearts of the victims will never be known beyond the final messages they may spoken in final phone calls. It is my hope that we can come away with the image of hope and transformation in the memory of the chaos of 9/11. If lightning can symbolize the state of being touched by God or a higher power then it is my wish for the victims of September 11th that a spiritual presence made itself known to at least some of them. It is my hope that an insight or realization came to some of them, to ease the long moments of suffering in the burning towers before they experienced the merciful release of death.