"You have held certain beliefs about yourself, but now you are changing one of htem.  You may have always felt that a particulat thing was basically and fundamentally true about you.  You know that if you change that impression and accept the new idea, you will experience far-reaching ramifications in the rest of your life." - Gail Fairfield

The Tower is the 16th Trump in the Major Arcana. Traditionally the Tower represents having our foundation shaken to the core; having our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and our world totally destroyed. But this destruction allows us to see things in a new way that would have been impossible without this experience. 

Looking at this card today I realized that it doesn't matter what it's "traditional" meaning is.  What it represents for me today is my brother Tom.  Today is Tom's birthday.  He would have been 38 years old but he was killed when he was 16 by a homeless man.  But my goal today is not to focus on Tom's death but on his life.

In his own way, Tom had some Tower elements in him.  He just had a knack for looking at things from such a different perspective that you were never able to see it quite the same way again.  He wasn't a genius or a paragon of virtue.  In fact in some ways he was very naive.  He was like that child that always asks "but why" and makes you totally reconsider why you believe certain things and behave in certain ways.  He wasn't perfect.  Tom had a fierce temper and when he was younger he had a lot of trouble controlling it.  He could also be very forgetful.  If you sent him to the store for something there was no guarantee you'd actually get when you sent him to buy or that you'd get any change.  One time my mother sent him to the story to buy a nativity scene and he came back saying they didn't have "Jesus and the wise guys". 

You couldn't help but laugh at his pranks.  And he took such joy in pulling pranks on us.  One time, after my mom's uncle had passed away, Tom used Uncle Mickey's fedora and set it atop a deflated basketball and some cushions that he draped in Mickey's clothes and made a dummy that looked like it was Mickey sitting on the sofa.  It scared the heck out of me and when he heard my yelp I heard Tom chuckling in his room.  He must've waited up all night to catch a victim.

So in honor of Tom I decided to pull three cards to see if I could get some kind of message from him.  Because I didn't know what to ask, I pulled 3 Major Arcana cards from Joanna's Gaian Tarot.  I drew The Tower, The Builder and Justice.  Then I drew 3 cards from the Arcus Arcanum deck to focus on these areas and I drew the 6 of Wands, 5 of Wands and 3 of Wands.

It doesn't matter what the actual meanings of these cards is - I realize that Tom is telling me he's fine.  I know this because Tom always loved hockey.  He wore his hockey uniform as often as he could and always had his roller skates on (he was on a roller hockey team).  And all three of these cards (drawn from the Arcus Arcanum deck) look like a hockey game.  There are 6 players on each side - the 6 of Wands.  The 5 of Wands looks like players scuffling for the puck.  And the 3 of Wands reminds me of the center and two forwards.  I think this is Tom's way of letting me know he is okay.  We may miss him terribly, but he has moved on and is doing fine.  Out of all the things I'd love to know that is probably the most comforting.