XVI · The Tower
As the birth arcanum
Born under the Tower, your life proceeds by demolition. Structures you built carefully come down, usually suddenly, and usually because they stood on something untrue. You have nerve: crisis focuses you, and you are calm at precisely the moment others are not. Your gift is truthfulness under pressure — you say the thing that ends the pretence, and you survive circumstances people do not normally recover from. Your task is to build honestly in the first place, and to stop reading every collapse as punishment. A Tower life is not cursed; it is repeatedly cleared of everything that would not have held.
As the arcanum of the year
A year of sudden change. Something breaks — a job, a marriage, an illusion, an address — and the release afterwards is real. Do not defend a structure that is already failing: leave, cut, tell the truth early. What is destroyed this year was never built to hold your next ten.
As the arcanum of the day
A day when something gives way. Expect news, argument or breakage, and handle it plainly instead of smoothing it over. Back up your work, drive carefully, and say the true sentence you have been avoiding.