The biggest takeaway from the astrology and tarot class I took in Greece last week was: Don’t sugarcoat bad cards. Don’t even try. I mean, how could a card that looks like this be positive?
Along with The Devil and Death, The Tower is one of the most feared cards in tarot. I have pulled The Devil and Death more times than I can count, enough that nowadays when I look at the The Devil I’m like: Oh it’s you, old friend. In fact I kind of like pulling The Devil because while it is about obsession, it’s also about hedonism and the choice to do things you know are bad for you. It’s sexy! It’s cool! Even if it applies to, like, the cooking simulation phone game that gave me carpal tunnel because I played it too much.
In class, I was told The Tower wasn’t just chaos and destruction, but unexpected chaos and destruction – the unexpected part, symbolised by the lightning bolt, is key. It is often interpreted that the two people falling out of The Tower are the same two hedonists chained by The Devil – and shock of The Tower is the only thing that could stop them from the dark path they were heading down. I wonder if addiction or toxic habits can be considered this way: the Major Arcana but just up to number 16 (The Tower), then re-setting back to The Fool at the start of the journey, trying his best to navigate, making some bad decisions, being unable or unwilling to stop the unhealthy behaviour, being cast out of The Tower, and back to 0 (The Fool). That is deeply sad: to be in a state where all the beautiful, healing cards after The Tower are inaccessible.
I asked my teacher Joanna: What if I pulled The Tower and wrote a list of 100+ potential worst case scenarios? Would that soften the blow? To which she replied: Whatever The Tower represents will not be on that list. Unexpected is the operative word here. In that sense, The Tower reminds me of the thing that’s easy to forget when I’m mired in all this woo stuff: You cannot predict or control life. Best you can do is stare at the cards (or stars, or numbers) without flinching and have faith that you will figure it out somehow.
Not that this made it any easier when I pulled The Tower for the first time, last week – after many, many years of pulling tarot cards. But once the shock of ‘worst case scenario’ wore off, there was a feeling of freedom that only comes when the thing you’ve been dreading finally happens. Painful as it is, at least you don’t have fear or dread to contend with anymore. You just need to muster enough strength to pull the next card. Which, by default, will be better.
I’ve been thinking about dread a lot lately, especially after watching The Beast.
The movie is based on a Henry James novel about a man who spends his life dreading a particular event, one he can’t describe but just knows is terrifying, and it prevents him from accepting the love of a good woman, so to speak (but also literally the case). Unlike the book, the movie takes place in three different time periods: 1910, 2014 Los Angeles, and the not-too-distant future, where humans have to upload their emotions onto The Cloud in order to gain access to jobs that pay a decent living wage. In order to undergo the transition into emotionless / quasi-robotic human, Lea Seydeux’s Gabrielle has to re-visit past lives where this paralysing dread was most present and vanquish it once and for all.
Though the story’s execution isn’t as slick as the set-up (in my opinion), the visuals have stayed with me for weeks, specifically all the doll imagery. This plays out in many ways: scenes from inside a Victorian doll factory that’s transitioning from manufacturing porcelain to highly flammable plastic dolls, a line-up of interchangeable models at a casting call in Los Angeles, a doll-like sexy robot assigned to keep Gabrielle company during the disorienting process of detaching from her emotions.
Dolls are, after all, human figures devoid of emotions, designed for being projected onto. Not unlike tarot cards, arguably. Which is perhaps why the prospect of them coming to life is so deeply unsettling – because they’ve absorbed the full spectrum of our hopes and fears, and can now use that against us. No wonder Gabrielle is scared shitless all the time. I can’t say more without spoiling the movie, so I’ll leave you on this cheery note.
See you in a fortnight (by when my book will be available to purchase!),
Nikkitha
Link City:
Come to my talk with Lucie Elven at Burley Fisher on 2 July: tickets here. And please pre-order or purchase my book, Ghost Chilli, wherever books are sold! One of those links here.
Last week I was on a panel with fellow debut author Amy Twigg at the Women’s Prize Live festival, and I want to plug her book Spoilt Creatures here because I absolutely loved it. A magazine recently recommended it for people ‘in their folkmore era’ and, as someone who has been in that era since 2022 I have to agree.
This week I went to an event run by t’ART magazine at VFD in Dalston and was blown away by the writers and performers, so I am listing each of their IG handles here so you can follow them too: GAIL, A+D, Morrussy, Klāëjø Mînđ, The Grand Old Echo, and Dominic McGovern. Here’s a video I took from the eve of Morrussy, which my friend Katharine praised for its videography:
Actually bye this time,
Nikkitha