By Sarah Taylor
On March 24 this year, the Seven of Wands made an appearance in the Weekend Tarot Reading using the Voyager Tarot deck. It was then alluded to in the following week’s reading, using the Rider-Waite Smith tarot, in the form of the Eight of Wands — namely, that something released from the unconscious was “moving quickly into view,” i.e., that it was making itself conscious.
It appears again today, but now in a more concrete form — as concrete as it gets when it comes partnered with the second and the third cards: The Tower and the Ten of Pentacles.
How do I write of The Tower without provoking the reactions it so frequently elicits? Because I don’t feel it always deserves the bad press that it gets. In fact, I’m not sure it merits its bad press most of the time. What we react to most strongly when we see The Tower might be seen as a reaction to the unknown, and the fear of change — especially change that is visited on us with such force that it bypasses our defences.
It is in our nature to wage war against those parts of us that seem foreign enough that they feel nothing but threatening. For the most part this war is quiet, we keep it so well-hidden — not least from ourselves. But we can see it in the world around us, the political and militaristic posturing reflections of our railing at the inner unknown, which dares to be different to the point where we don’t know where we stand in relation to it. We have no idea how to approach it; it refuses to identify itself; it refuses to play by our rules. And so we take up arms, all of us silent soldiers to a greater or lesser extent, defending something we have built that has already run its course.