A Tower moment is a time of great turmoil which forces us to go within to seek and understand how we could have been so wrong about somebody, or blind to a situation that has happened. What the tower brings is revelation that forces us to look at the shocking truth, what will we do?
My husband died after a long battle with bowel cancer in 2007. Before he died he requested that I scatter his ashes by the Stoney Creek at Flowerdale, close to a property he had visited a lot with family during his childhood. We honoured that request. Then, in February 2009 wild fires ravaged the site where I had scattered him. Seeing and photographing the utter destruction is just one of the Tower moments I might include in a Tower Moment Memoir.
When we experience a tower moment we can experience grief, anger, and confrontation. These are reactions to the big changes going on within our inner world and our outer world which force us to look at and question our long held beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions, including our attitudes and behaviours.
A Tower moment is not only the ending a chapter of a book and closing it because it is done, it means with patience we will have everything we need in due time by working on ourselves. With a tower moment no matter how painful it is, it is in the knowing that with any destruction a space is formed for creation. Source: Light Messenger
Making Descansos: Marking Tower Moments
A body that has lived a long time has accumulated debris. It cannot be avoided.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I first learned about the concept of Descansos when I read Clarissa Pinkola Estes ‘Women Who Run With Wolves’. Estés writes that there is a time in our lives, usually in midlife when a woman has to make a decision – possibly the most the important psychic decision of her future life – about whether to be bitter or not”.
Estes describes how when you travel in Old Mexico, New Mexico, southern Colorado, Arizona, or parts of the South, you will see little white crosses by the roadside. These are descansos, resting places, a place where a soul departed.
The concept of marking resting places is not confined to the United States or Mexico. They may be found in Greece, Italy and many other countries, including Australia.
Descansos are symbols that mark a death but there are many deaths we experience in our lifetime. “Women have died a thousand deaths before they are twenty years old. They’ve gone in this direction or that, and have been cut off”.
Making Descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the tower moments are. We can record our tower moments by symbolically marking moments that changed lives, be they major or relatively minor events, in a visual map.
Get a bit sheet of butcher paper and mark places with a small cross or with Tower Cards from your deck collection.
Alternatively, meditate upon a range of artistic interpretations of the Tower and see what memories rise for you. Take the time to record the Tower Moments.
Exploring Tower Moments:
Lisa at Supportive Tarot has a series called Tarot Memoirs. Here is her recording talking about the Tower and her Tower Memoirs.
The Tarot Midwife 