Eight Tall Towers that mark your path through life

The door of paradise


Eight Tall Towers that mark your path through life

by Madeline Montalban

Whenever I come to the four eights in the Minor Arcana, I always think of the quotation from the Slayer of Souls which runs: "For eight tall towers guard the route of human life, where, at all hours, Death looks out, holding a knife, rolled in a shroud."

If you haven't read this shuddery and thought-provoking novel by Robert W. Chambers you've missed a treat. It went out of print years ago, so if you want a copy secondhand booksellers are your only hope. Mind you, like all novels with evil magic as a theme, there is only a minute grain of truth wrapped up in a lot of fiction, but novelists who write about black magic never pretend it is the real thing. They make it up as they go along, and don’t expect you to take it seriously. In fact, if it weren't for novelists, the "wicked black magician" would take his place as a mainly fictional character, and so would the so-called Secret Brotherhoods of Great White Masters. The evidence for the existence of both, in my opinion, is very slight indeed.

But if there does exist a league of secret Masters who can save the world, now is the time they should emerge from remote Tibet – or darkest Wapping, or wherever they hang out. This planet has about arrived at that phase in its history where anybody with any wisdom, secret or otherwise, is badly needed!

If there are (as novelists love to assure us there are) gangs of wicked black magicians engaged in plots to destroy mankind, they seem to be having it all their own way. It's about time the other side emerged from their secret pavilions and came out for their innings.

Whether we study the occult as an accepted thing, or only from curiosity, it is necessary to keep a sense of proportion about it. Much of this secret art has never been proved, and those things that time and use have proved to be true don't have set rules, like the Tarot itself. Though the meanings of the cards have been given in books and articles over and over again, there still remains the fact that each skilled interpreter places his or her own meaning on the cards, and associates certain events with certain cards.

Take the Eight of Swords, for instance. The meaning of this card in a spread is "quarrels, rivalry, also illness" and, when reversed, “a calamity or an accident resulting in bloodshed". According to the other cards that lie with it, this card can be interpreted as "a tiff, and some small digestive upset in consequence", or in its worst aspect can go so far as predicting sudden death! It all depends on the Querent, the lie of the other cards, and your own interpretation of the card. Personally, I regard the Eight of Swords as one of the most evil-omened cards in the pack, perhaps because I know what lies behind the doggerel of Eight Tall Towers. It is this.

In every life we must pass through ordeals, and these are usually called the Dark Towers. There are eight times, in each of our lives, when we are in great danger of some kind or another. The first is when we are born – for some babies are born dead, they fail to pass the first Tower. The last Tower of all, the eighth, which we all fail to pass, comes to us in the hour of death. Between the tower of birth and the tower of death there are six other towers, or danger points in our lives. These are the times of initiation when, on this plane, working itself out in the events of our daily lives, we are either paying off karma, or learning some bitter lesson. These are the times when the spirit quails. Our testing can come as either personal suffering; illness of great gravity; some emotional or nervous upheaval; accident, or any one of the many unpleasant things that disrupt our lives.

The more important we are, judged by worldly standards, the greater the ordeal and the risk. The less important we are, the less the ordeal and risk. For instance, we can all get into disgrace of some kind, and do, but nobody hears much about it because we are not in the public eye. But let the same thing happen to a prominent figure, and the story rings round the world. The suffering is greater, because the worldly prestige is greater.

Everything in Occultism, from reading a Tarot spread to studying ritual and practice, needs a sense of proportion. You must adapt all you hear and learn to what is feasible in your own case. So, if the Eight of Swords falls on your card in a spread, don't jump to the worst conclusion. Think it out. Bloodshed can mean as little as cutting yourself with a razor, or pricking your finger with a pin, just as easily as it can mean the other thing if the circumstances of your life warrant it. If you were a gangster, for example, the same card could well presage murder and sudden death – because you would be living in that kind of atmosphere. Ordinary folk don't, so their Towers of Ordeal, though stiff enough, work themselves out in the events of their daily lives, and in proportion.

Do you know the classic test whereby students of old gained admittance to the schools of occult power? It was the natural ability to learn, plus the ability to keep a sense of proportion about what they had learned. You can have one of the qualities without the other, but that won't be enough. If you have both, it is rare, but the fortunate possessor will never come to any harm in studying the occult, in any of its branches. Therefore, it implies that the person who can learn, apply what is learned, and keep a sense of proportion is unlikely to become a "black" magician. For that is only one branch of the occult, and to become really skilled you need to know about every branch. Equally so, the "great white lodges" in their fastnesses are too remote from the problems of mankind (if they do exist) to do any practical good! Both types have got the thing out of proportion.

The best type of occult practitioner is one who plugs along, learning all he can, discarding what is useless, retaining what is workable, and keeping a sense of proportion. It is this sense of proportion that enables you to judge in a flash whether folks are talking occult truths or not. Everything must balance, must add up to something, as I learned the day a very wise man told off a woman who thought black magicians wanted to get her in their power. He looked at her, then said quietly: "Madam, you are not beautiful and young. You are not rich, and you have no great position. Now, can you explain why any black magician should think it worth while bothering?" Offended she might have been, but that straight talk dispelled her silly fears, because she was shocked into seeing her problem in its true perspective.

If the Eight of Swords has another message, it should be "by this you will learn a sense of proportion". For there is one thing that trouble does teach us, and that is what is worth while, and what is not.

Now to a happier Eight! This time the Eight of Cups, which in a spread means "happiness, laughter and gaiety" or, when reversed, "disinterested love rewarded". Yet these, too, imply a tower passed, for "disinterested love" means that those of you who have spent your life serving others for no reward, expecting and hoping for none (which can be a Tower of Ordeal in itself) are due for an unlooked-for reward from an unexpected source. When the card is upright, and the Querent is, at the time of the reading, encompassed by trouble and worry, it means that "happiness, laughter and gaiety" will be the ultimate result of the Tower. It does not mean that whatever the inquirer is worrying about will necessarily end happily, but that something else will bring joy when the crash is over.

Don't fear the ordeals of life or the ill-omened cards in a spread, for experience of all kinds is part of life, and we survive and get through somehow. It is only the last ordeal, the last Tower of all that kills, and after that there is a reward. We are transported to a happier sphere where we can really enjoy ourselves, until the time for rebirth rolls round again.
[Prediction, December 1958]

If Miss Montalban's mention of Robert W. Chambers' The Slayer of Souls has given you an appetite for the book, be warned: it is very much of its time. I read this article when it first came out in 1958 and yearned to read the novel. I finally came across a copy in my local library after I had relocated to Bradford, a small town in the north of England. Chambers writes in the style of Sax Rohmer and the book is something of a pot-boiler. While not the worst of novels, it contains little occult lore; although, as Miss Montalban indicates, it points the esoteric student in certain directions and if the hints were followed up the dedicated researcher might uncover some interesting facts. I was disappointed by the book, but then I had high expectations of it. Read with lower expectations, it could be a satisfying read. T.W.