Major Arcana · XVI

The Tower Year

Fire

A Tower year brings down what was never going to hold. The job that ends in a day, the truth that comes out and can't go back in, the story you'd been holding up with both hands that finally drops. It hurts, and it clears. What's false goes so suddenly there's no putting it back, and the air afterward is strangely clean. You're not breaking this year. You're breaking free of a structure that wasn't built to hold you. Let it fall. You never needed that particular cage as much as you feared.

What to do with a Tower yearWhen something falls this year, ground your body first, then name what was false or forced in the thing that broke. Give the grief a container, and rebuild slowly without rushing to look fine.

Your twelve months

Each month steps one place forward through the cycle. The same twelve, in the same order, for any Tower year.

January
The StarFebruary
The MoonMarch
The SunApril
JudgementMay
The WorldJune
The FoolJuly
The MagicianAugust
The High PriestessSeptember
The EmpressOctober
The EmperorNovember
The HierophantDecember
The Lovers

Element weather

How the twelve months balance across the elements.

4Air months3Fire months3Earth months2Water months

The rest of the cycle

The nine Majors a Tower year doesn’t touch.

The ChariotStrengthThe HermitWheel of FortuneJusticeThe Hanged OneDeathTemperanceThe Devil
The full year-ahead reading

The whole Tower year, woven

This page is the theme. The full reading walks all twelve months in the Almanac’s voice, reads the element weather, brings in how your Bearing meets the year, and closes with the skills and reflection questions a Tower year calls for.

See a sample reading →

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More on this card: The Tower, the full meaning · The Tower as a Bearing · all seventy-eight cards