The Tower

“The Tower card represents the need for old structures to fall away, in order to make space for the new. The shattered stone of the Tower’s walls is a symbol of sudden change. This is a card signifying momentous and radical shifts, revolutionary transformation that shakes loose foundations and topples traditions. The old way is no longer viable. Cracks appear, the sky opens, bricks crumble. At times, catharsis arrives unbidden and unexpected. There is no escape. Chaos, disruption, a rift caused by the lightning bolt of insight. Regardless of the method, illusion must and will be shattered. Worlds crash down, and yet, rise up again. Mistruths dissipate, perspective shifts violently, and as the dust settles, the first new blooms emerge from the rubble.”
- Jessica Hundley, The Library of Esoterica TAROT

The Playlist

Let’s begin with an important caveat: there are no “bad” cards in the Tarot. One of the great lessons of Tarot is that life is cyclical, constantly changing and evolving. If you land on a card that depicts darkness, pain, grief, or conflict, it is almost always followed by renewal, hope, and transformation. The more of these essays I write, the more I realize how much of Tarot is about developing a sense of comfort with change.

In the artwork of the Rider Waite Colman Smith deck, The Tower is represented literally, an imposing structure, phallic like a lighthouse, sitting atop a rocky cliff. Lightning has struck the top, shattering its crown-like roof and lighting the building on fire. Two figures are falling (or possibly jumping) from the burning building, one reaching out toward the oncoming ground, the other falling backwards helplessly. Flames engulf the structure, and fire rains down from above. You’d be forgiven for thinking yikes if you pull this card. I didn’t say change was easy.

The Tower and Death are both about radical transformation. I always think of Death as change from within, and The Tower as change that comes from an external event forcing transformation. Death is metamorphosis, The Tower is deus ex machina. External forces that create transformation include things like — a tornado, your house burning down, being fired from your job, the death of a loved one, winding up in jail, hitting rock bottom. There are no bad cards, but there are challenging cards.

Lately the whole world has been having a Tower moment. The tumult and resistance we are seeing on college campuses fits in the Tower category. In fact, some of the images we are seeing feel like almost literal representations of The Tower: campus buildings (Towers) overrun, flames and tear gas flying through the air, students running from police. Protest is where the Justice card meets the Tower card — when people have had enough, when their moral clarity becomes unbearable and they can no longer stomach the status quo, they use protest to bring The Tower to the powers that be. Sometimes the system can be reasoned with, and sometimes the system must be destroyed.

In times of chaos, when I experience an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, when I spend half the day reading about horror and the other half doomscrolling through other peoples’ opinions on that horror, I turn to the only consistent force for good in my life. I wish I could say that was my kids. But friends, if you think that there’s only stress-relief to be found in parenting, you’re probably not a parent. I love my kids, but no, dolls, I’m talking about Vanderpump Rules.

This is a larger topic, one that I’ll tackle in another post, but for now let’s focus on The Tower. Nothing more succinctly describes this card than last summer’s Scandoval.

A quick note: If you haven't watched VPR, I really recommend that you take the over one hundred hours you'll need to digest this glorious epic. You will not regret it. VPR began as a reality show spin-off of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Lisa Vanderpump was a Beverly Hills house wife who owned multiple restaurants in West Hollywood. VPR began as a show about the staff of her restaurant, SUR (which stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant). Over time it has become about so much more.

Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval have been the most stable couple on VPR for almost a decade. Though their relationship began as an affair — yes, Tom admitted to Stassi, he and Ariana kissed at the Golden Nugget — it blossomed into a full blown romantic and business partnership.

They co-authored cocktail books , parented various animals, and bought an enormous five bedroom modern farmhouse in Valley Village that they decorated with, among other things, a customized piece from my friend and artist, Andy Bauch.

They seemed happy-ish. Ariana always struck me as a beautiful bisexual woman who’d be a lot happier with a young Megan Rapinoe, but instead, she was with Sandoval, a man who sort of plays the trumpet, fronts a cover band called “Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras,” and who weaseled his way into co-authoring a cocktail book with her even though she’d gotten the deal on her own, because he had "been a bartender for longer.”

When you receive The Tower in a reading and a catastrophic event doesn’t leap to mind immediately, your next step is to ask yourself what walls in your life need to come down? Are you living according to someone else’s rules? Are you building a system or structure around you that protects you from pain but also prevents you from growth? Are you common-law married to an aging reality star with white nail polish and a mustache?

Ariana and Tom’s McMansion is a perfect encapsulation of this interpretation of The Tower. Together, they created a kind of minimalist white-walled prison for their domestic hell. As they co-existed, more roommates than lovers as the years went by, the open concept floor plan gave them physical proximity to paper over the growing distance in their relationship. The modern farmhouse was about to fall down around them.

In the early years of the show, part of what drew an audience was the unhinged and chaotic behavior of this real group of friends– their drunken fights and meltdowns, the cheating and the finding out and the punching and the grudges and the eventual making up. For example:

Kristen fucked her best friend, Stassi’s boyfriend, Jax.

Stassi found out and slapped Kristen in the face.

They made up and went on to start a wine label together — The Witches of Weho.

That very same Kristen, who fucked Jax while watching DRIVE starring Ryan Gosling, on the couch of the cursed apartment she shared with her then-boyfriend Tom Sandoval (keep up people), would go on to date a younger man named James Kennedy. They were never meant to be.

James would later find himself embroiled in a love rectangle when his ex-fiance, Raquel (nee Rachel), became the other woman in Scandoval. ARE YOU LISTENING? ARE YOU TAKING NOTES?

In March of 2023, Vanderpump Rules Season 10 was winding down, and it looked like it would probably be their last. The most watchable (read: borderline sociopathic) members of the cast had been fired for racism in 2020 or gotten sober, and the biggest storyline was the divorce of Katie Maloney and Tom Schwartz (a different Tom than Sandoval, best friends with Tom Sandoval, KEEP UP).

Katie and Schwartz had been a cursed pairing since day one. Schwartz once poured a drink on Katie’s head on a crowded New Orleans street.

Katie once screamed at Schwartz that his dick didn’t work in the middle of a day of planning their wedding.

Their divorce came as a surprise, not because they shouldn’t have gotten divorced (the divorce is definitely the best thing that ever happened to Ms. Maloney) but because they both seemed determined to torture each other to the grave. 

The cast had finally gotten through whatever clause in their contracts had forced them to stay in their terrible WeHo apartments, and had moved en masse to the Valley into modern McMansions. It felt like they were growing up. Sure, Sandoval seemed like a goober but an innocuous one, and Ariana loved him and she was cool, so who were we to yuck their yum?

Rolling toward the end of season ten, it seemed that the show had run its course. A few members of the cast had children, some were enjoying moderate success in the restaurant/publishing/podcasting world, and it seemed like maybe they were getting a little too old or self-aware to participate in the relentless tomfoolery that had made the show what it was in its heyday. Boy oh boy were we wrong.

A few days into March, the internet blew up with reports that Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix had split. Not only was it over, but Sandoval had apparently been cheating on Madix for months with his friend James Kennedy’s former fiancé and pageant queen Raquel Leviss. Lest we forget, every single one of these people is a series regular on this show. The betrayals are more incestuous than Game of Thrones. Sandoval had even helped to pay for and organize James's proposal to Raquel just a few years earlier. This is what Vanderpump Rules was made for. This was a return to its poisoned and glorious roots. 

The internet exploded. I definitely lost my mind. There were still episodes left to air, episodes that would push phony storylines about Raquel and Tom SCHWARTZ (the other Tom) sharing a not-so-steamy-kiss at Scheana’s wedding. It was becoming clear that Raquel and Sandoval's affair had been happening under everyone (including production’s) noses. The audience would get to watch episodes knowing what was coming and look for clues. The clues, it turned out were everywhere. It was like rewatching The Sixth Sense now that you know the twist.

Production picked up cameras three days after Ariana found out about the affair and people I hadn’t heard from in years were texting and DMing me for my reaction. 

I had always thought of myself as a person who watched Vanderpump Rules as a guilty pleasure and not as a central part of my personality. But, you guys, so much of my sobriety is about being honest with myself. And the truth is: VPR is my higher power.

I was rapt by the escalating unraveling of Sandoval and Ariana’s decade-long partnership. I could not believe that Sandoval had been sleeping with Raquel of all people — Raquel who was more than a decade younger than Tom, who Tom and Ariana always treated like a little sister, who’s storyline included conquering her fear of public speaking, feeling hurt when the other girls didn’t show up to the baby shower she threw herself when she got a puppy...

...and crying about aging out of pageants.

Politics are never mentioned on VPR because most of these people aren’t interested, but Donald Trump got a mention during Raquel’s pageant meltdown (Trump was one of the people who decided that after 27, nobody wants to see a woman in a bathing suit competition, or out in public at all if possible).

I found myself listening to each and every cast member’s podcast as they breathlessly cashed in on their friends misfortunes. I don’t say that with malice or judgement. These kids (they are my age and in many cases older) proved to be smarter than anyone gave them credit for. They rallied, sold merch, wrote diss tracks, hosted club nights and DJ sets, took commercial work, and leaned all the way the fuck in. Even Sandoval, who would spend the following season complaining about how everybody cashed in on his misery, did other reality shows and toured with his “band.”

Meanwhile, Ariana was fully in her Tower moment. Bereft, heartbroken, and shattered, she raged and sobbed.

Part of Ariana’s appeal on this show is that she’s always felt like a reasonable adult. She never seemed like a person who set out to be on a reality show, and she continued to behave reasonably as the people around her descended into chaos.

When Ariana got drunk she was adorable.

When she got angry she was articulate.

Honestly, her only real sin was her assertion that she “takes sketch comedy very seriously.” 

So Scandoval, which was revitalizing Vanderpump Rules and raising the profile of every single cast member (the New York Times wrote multiple pieces about it!), didn’t feel like an opportunity to the woman who had recently frozen her eggs in spite of never wanting children in case Sandoval really wanted them. She didn’t feel like turning lemons into lemonade as she sat in her heterosexual hellscape across from the man she’d always loved, the man she thought she would spend her life with. It doesn’t matter that the rest of us could see she was better than him in a million ways, she loved this douche canoe.

In the months that followed, things got ugly. They fought over the fate of the house, and while they fought, they co-habitated in silence, communicating through a terrorized 40 year old Taylor Swift fan named Ann.

Sandoval, who'd always been used to being seen as "the nice guy," cried into Lisa Vanderpump's French doors overlooking her swan pond and mini pony stable, and continued to cite Ariana’s mental health as an explanation for why he hadn’t just broken up with her instead of cheating on her for seven months.

When cameras picked up filming in the wake of her discovery, Ariana was reeling, still in shock and mourning not just the relationship but the entire trajectory of the life she thought she was building.

This is The Tower. Through no fault of her own, Ariana’s world came crashing down. The Modern Farmhouse had to fall.

But! Look what has happened since. As the world tuned in to watch her pain, Ariana told her reps that since she was going to be single again, she needed money. And they delivered. Shitty things Sandoval had said to justify the affair became copy for advertisements.

“I buy all my own batteries now” says Ariana in a commercial for Duracell. She did ads for Bic, Bloomingdale's, Lay's, Uber 1, T Mobile and more. The ads all subtly or not-so-subtly referenced Scandoval, and Ariana got paid.

In the Major Arcana, The Tower is followed by The Star. After the pain of The Tower, The Star offers hope, a chance to remember your purpose, and the ineffable qualities that make you you. In Ariana’s case, this transformation is laughably literal. Post Scandoval, Ariana competed and came in 3rd on Dancing with the Stars.

She was offered the starring role of Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway, and her run was so successful that she’ll be reprising the role in August of 2024. 

Vanderpump Rules is at an all-time high in viewership, and Ariana is thriving. Best of all (for me), it doesn’t seem likely to get canceled any time soon (they did pause shooting and I've seen disturbing rumors that Ariana and Katie have removed VPR from their social media profiles – Bravo, get your fucking shit together and do whatever it takes to get these people back on my television ASAP). I hope to be watching the gang fuck each other’s significant others in whatever nursing home they all end up in together. 

Let Scandoval be your reminder that it’s always darkest before the dawn, and sometimes, if you’re not willing to break up with your terrible boyfriend, the universe will take it upon itself to change your life for you.

NOTE: I love the cast of Vanderpump Rules, okay? Every single last one of them, including Tom Sandoval. I am grateful to them for putting themselves out there like this for our enjoyment. I think this show is truly modern Shakespeare. These are performers at the top of their game. You can always feel when a scene is being "written" or "produced" on this show, because most of it feels so damn real. Since Scandoval, they've broken the fourth wall, and the show has become about a group of real friends who were cast on a reality show together navigating fame and notoriety as minor celebrities and influencers. Honestly, is there anything more of-the-moment than that???? So I tip my hat to each of them. I poke fun, but these people get nothing but love from me.

Recommendations!

Watch Vanderpump Rules and its sister spin-off, The Valley. You won't be sorry.

My favorite podcast in the world and my obsession is Sexy Unique Podcast with Lara Marie Schoenhals and Carey O'Donnell. Every week they break down episodes of Bravo shows, including Vanderpump Rules and The Valley, and it is truly the best part of my week. Lara and Carey are so funny that I listen to them talk about shows I don't watch, have never watched, and will never watch. These are two brilliant geniuses at the top of their game. Carey is also a hilarious follow on instagram.