The Tower Years: My Time in the House of the Devil by James Glossop
My journey to The Tower began over a decade ago with a powerful dream. Back then I knew little about Tarot and nothing at all of the card I’d eventually come to see as defining the strange and tumultuous phase my life was about to enter.
The Tower is generally considered one of the most ominous trumps in the major arcana and is known to strike fear into the hearts of all who draw it. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, it is synonymous with disaster, upheaval, and violent change. My dream featured none of this, however. It took place during the school holidays. I was a child again, and my mum had taken my sister and I on a day trip. I can remember a peaceful summer’s day, a vast expanse of open grassland, and a huge stone tower shooting up into a clear blue sky. Objectively, this narrative may not appear particularly significant, but the feeling of awe combined with blissful serenity I experienced when staring up at the dream tower remained with me long after waking.
Afterwards, I began paying attention to real life towers, perhaps in the hope of connecting more fully with the lingering feeling from the dream. This led to me researching the history and folklore of Stoodley Pike, an imposing local landmark positioned high up on the moors, near Todmorden, West Yorkshire. The Pike, as it’s more commonly known around these parts, is a 121-foot-tall stone obelisk originally built in 1814 to commemorate the surrender of Napoleon in Paris. A number of striking parallels can be drawn with its counterpart from the Tarot.
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck depicts The Tower being hit by a bolt of lightning. Flames lick out from the windows, and two figures, one male and one female, plummet from the structure in an attempt to escape its imminent collapse. In 1854, Stoodley Pike was similarly struck by lightning, coincidentally (given its status as a monument to peace) on the same day the Russian ambassador left London to declare Britain’s involvement in the Crimean war. This apparent pre-empting of upheaval is very much in keeping with the lore attached to The Tower card, as is the fact that The Pike itself would subsequently topple. It was rebuilt two years later when the war was over, this time with the addition of a lightning conductor.
© Lion Series via Calderdale Council
In the late mediaeval period, The Tower was sometimes known by an alternative name - The House of the Devil. Interestingly, legend tells us that in ancient times, the spot on the hillside where Stoodley Pike would later be built was occupied by a cairn containing human bones. Locals believed the devil himself resided beneath the cairn, sometimes hosting wild parties attended by his fellow underworld dwellers. Chaos ripped through the surrounding farms during these satanic soirees, with cattle said to be taken inexplicably ill, and milk turning sour or refusing to churn. The legend goes on to explain that in the event of a stone becoming dislodged from the cairn, flames would be seen flashing out from the hillside - a situation that could only be rectified by a resident of the village of Stoodley putting the site back in order.
Disaster and malevolent energy appear ever present throughout Stoodley Pike’s history. At a masonic ritual marking the laying of the foundation stone for the 1814 incarnation, a child sitting on his father’s shoulders happened to lean in too close and was cut by a ceremonial sword. Accounts from the time describe, ‘blood flowing freely.’
The Tower trump card - Rider Waite Smith Tarot
It was a bright August day, not dissimilar to the one in my dream, when my partner and I made the trek across the moors to The Pike. Inside the obelisk, an unlit spiral staircase leads to a viewing gallery 40 feet above ground level. It has been suggested that the ascent in darkness, followed by an unparalleled panoramic view of the Calder Valley, is designed to echo the blindfolded initiation rite (symbolising the path to enlightenment) undertaken by Freemasons. Regardless of whether this idea has any grounding in fact, looking back I can’t escape the notion that a switch was flipped and something important set in motion that day. Externally, we’d completed our journey and climbed The Pike, but internally, a far more complex journey was only just beginning. The stumbling through darkness in order to reach the light metaphor would prove uncannily apt.
Around this time, I started therapy, seeing a Psychosynthesis counsellor once a week. I was also meditating regularly. The motivation behind this was twofold; I wanted to connect more deeply with my own unconscious in order to create more freely, and also resolve some long-standing mental health issues. At the time I didn’t realise the extent to which these two things were intertwined, and that in order to free myself I would have to face myself completely. I journaled and spoke at length about my childhood. I wrote a short story about Stoodley Pike that delved into the issues I was currently confronting. When it was accepted for publication, I returned to The Pike, read the story aloud, and scattered shreds of the paper it was written on like ashes from the balcony. I was looking to give thanks and gain closure, but closure did not come. Instead, I went further and further into myself. A combination of all of this, and my body and brain crying out for the SSRI’s I’d not long since discontinued, led to a long period of intense anxiety and panic attacks. Robert M Place, in his book, The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism, says, ‘The Tower represents the clearing away of negativity…the burning away of pride and egotism…’ An alchemical process was clearly underway. My brittle and illusory sense of self was crumbling just like The Tower, and the ramifications were inherently painful. Eventually I went back on a holding dose of medication and slowly regained some stability.
Through reading about Carl Jung and the Chilean Film director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, I developed an interest in Tarot. Throughout the early years of my initial experiments, I drew The Tower card so often it became an in joke between myself and my friends. Synchronicities occurred involving both real life towers and the card itself. The most bizarre of these happened at a gig by the band, Spirit of the Beehive, when a man in a black biker jacket appeared in the crowd directly in front of me. Closer inspection revealed the jacket had a white outlined hand painted picture of The Tower from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck on the back. Seconds later, another nearby audience member fainted so close to us that my partner almost caught her.
In keeping with the divinatory meaning of the card, these ‘tower years’ were marked by a catalogue of distressing events: the small branch library where I’d worked alone for many years burned down due to a senseless act of vandalism; my dad was hospitalised on numerous occasions with a serious illness; old friends, family members, and our two elderly cats passed away. The internal work I’d done previously helped me to deal with these recurrent lightning strikes, but still, they took their toll.
For Christmas 2023, a friend gave my partner a lovely vintage edition of the Rider-Waite deck, and a few days later, I requested a single card reading for the year ahead. My partner shuffled and spread the cards. I paused, taking a moment to reflect, then turned over The Tower reversed.
The inversion here implies avoidance and aversion to change. I’d pulled it before on numerous occasions and wonder now if it signals an inability to fully let go of the old version of myself; that despite the fact that much work has been done, a part of me is still desperately clinging to the rubble that remains.
Returning to the dream that seemingly initiated this journey, a question arises: why did I feel such peace whilst gazing up at the tower? Was it simply a false sense of security - the calm before the storm? I prefer to believe it offers a vision of a potential future, one where I’m able to face life’s inevitable cycle of disintegration followed by the need to rebuild more strongly, more truly oneself, with greater equanimity. In the sequence of the Tarot, The Tower is, of course, followed by The Star, and it’s only via the collapse of the former that we are able to catch sight of the possibility of rebirth and rejuvenation that this next card brings.
Bibliography
John Billingsley, Folk Tales from Calderdale, Volume 1 (Northern Earth 2007)
Jessica Hundley, The Library of Esoterica: Tarot (Taschen 2021)
Robert M Place, The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism (Hermes Publications 2017)
Steve Hanson, https://stoodleypike.blogspot.com/2009/12/freemasonry-and-stoodley-pike-west.html?m=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoodley_Pike
James Glossop is from Halifax, West Yorkshire. He holds a BA Honours in English Studies from Huddersfield University, and works for Calderdale Libraries. His work has been published in Black Flowers Arts Journal, Popshot, Northern Earth, and Myth and Lore Zine.