Housewives' Tarot: The Tower XVI

Most Tower cards have a tower getting hit by lightning and otherwise destroyed. A few Tower cards have the Tower still standing, but there is impending doom and disaster looming. The Housewives Tarot has that kind of card. (The other ones are the MRP Fairytale and the Tarot of the Angels.) We have a woman standing, but the bottom half of her (a skirt?) is a stack of Jello deserts (the kind with gelitan and filled with fruit pieces. My Grandma has molds for these hanging in her kitchen.) Obviously this kind of structure is not stable. If this woman tries to move, then the tower will collapse and she will just fall flat on her face. There will be a big mess to clean up.

I feel like this woman may look stable in her life, but her foundations, spiritual, financial, mental, and otherwise are unstable and may collapse at anytime.

Thoughts?

I see a false sense of security. Confusion with too many choices leading to indecision. Options need to be evaluated to streamline and make things easier; whilst these changes are necessary for long term stability, it may take a while to realise action must be taken because you are living with abundance which is giving a false sense of security because it will collapse (and shortly).

the word that always comes to mind to me when i see this is "instability"

and it brings to mind mental instability, bi-polar, depression, etc.

but if you look closely at the stuff in the jello....it's weird stuff..... green olives with pimentos? radishes? is that cauliflower? possibly even some avacado slices? ....who puts that in jello? to me that says you've got no clue what you're doing and you've built a tower that is not only unstable but unappetizing, and thrown together out of random crap. .....basically you don't know what the hell you are doing and it's bound to come crashing down.

Two words comes to my mind: Fragility and Unconsciousness. Fragility because all the structure can crumble down at any time. Unconsciousness because she doesn't seems to understand of her surrounding. She's not having any conscience of what she is doing in that weird, unattractive outfit.

annik said:

Two words comes to my mind: Fragility and Unconsciousness. Fragility because all the structure can crumble down at any time. Unconsciousness because she doesn't seems to understand of her surrounding. She's not having any conscience of what she is doing in that weird, unattractive outfit.

Click to expand...

like going through life doing things without thinking about them? a metaphor of making our daily outfits or surroundings by just kind of throwing things together willy nilly. i think i get it. interesting.

I interpret that whole deck as the Fool's journey towards housewifely, wifely perfection. The cards show the problems, pitfalls, challenges and benefits on this journey.

So the Tower shows us that the housewife's pride is wound up with her abilities to make the perfect, most beautiful, highest, most colourful jelly tower. The sin of hybris will catch up with her, and as she adds the highest piece, we can see how it will all come sliding down.

The sin of pride - exaggerating in order to impress others. The sin of working against your materials - know your limitations. Don't build a tower of Babylon, especially not from jello. Your downfall will be more embarrassing and evoking malicious joy in your houswifely neighbors whom you wanted to impress.