**See 12/12/20 update at end of blog

When I think of all the things that scare me the Electoral College doesn’t make the list. It’s a bureaucratic step for installing new presidents and I don’t think I’ve ever known the date of the Electoral College vote. Until this election year.

This year I do know the date of the Electoral College because like everyone else in 2020 I was “doom scrolling” on Thanksgiving when I saw this Washington Post headline, “Trump commits to stepping down if electoral college votes for Biden.” Ever since then I can’t stop thinking about the “if” in that headline. “If” the electoral college votes for Biden? Could President Trump convince Electors to vote for him even if he lost the popular vote in their respective state? I carried this idea around in my head like a grenade with the pin removed.

The next day, as I held an actual pen in hand, I updated my planner by writing in the tarot cards I pulled for the weeks of December. I use tarot to preview the future in three month increments. It’s a simple technique of asking, “What do I need to know about the next three months?” followed by pulling one card for each week. The result is a 12 card pull with colorful stories about future events, I call it the Timeline Spread. Yesterday as I hand-wrote the card names into my planner I realized that I was right to be worried about the Electoral College.

Timeline Spread using Tabula Mundi Deck, click to expand

You can see the Timeline Spread with its three rows of cards corresponding to November, December and January. I pulled this spread the evening of October 25, and at the time I was only focused on the November events. You can read more about those events and if they came true in this blog post.

As I worked to understand December’s tarot story I finally saw what one of its most troubling cards signified. The Electoral College meets on December 14 to cast their votes for President. December 14 is the third week in December and it’s the same week with one of the scariest cards in tarot, The Tower.

The Tower is the kind of card that clients immediately point at when it shows up in a tarot session. Tower doesn’t just hint at misfortune, it shouts immediate ruin and it shows catastrophe the week of the Electoral College.

Tower tells a story about disruption brought on by ruin. There are devastating lightening strikes. People are ejected from homes. Those homes are subsequently destroyed. Other tarot decks like the Tabula Mundi, used in my tarot pull, depict total chaos. A destructive thunderbolt lights up the landscape and displaces a menagerie of totemic animals. A wild boar runs for its life. Birds fall out of the sky. Smoke fills the air and the feathers fly. The world burns.

This is cosmic violence inciting change. Tower tells us you were unwilling to make a necessary change and now that change is being made for you. It’s the kick in the pants to shake off stagnation. This is catastrophe that forces you to undergo necessary growth.

While the Tower card is explicit in its symbolism its relevance to the Electoral College is less obvious. Before I realized December 14 was the date of the Electoral College I wasn’t really sure what to expect in terms of a personal or collective event. The way the Tower is drawn it doesn’t easily map into contemporary life (unless you’re a farmer). At best all I could see was that a big event would occur with enormous implications.

Showing My Work

Here’s where we slightly branch off into ‘showing my work’ terrain where I explain how I get to a prediction for the Electoral College from the Tower card. Admittedly, I didn’t get an initial psychic insight for the Tower beyond its metaphorical meaning. I do mentally “see” images (clairvoyance) and hear phrases (clairaudience) but for this card there wasn’t a hit. It wasn’t till I’d read that headline and wrote in my planner that I associated Tower card with the week of December 14 and the Electoral College.

While there are times when I experience clairvoyance and clairaudience there are just as many occasions when psychic insights comes from associative thinking. I’m come to understand that psychic insight isn’t as simple as insight being directly funneled into our brains like a conveyor belt from the psychic realm. There are many paths, like reading a headline then writing in a planner.

What’s Going to Happen with the Electoral College

When I realized Tower energy happens the same week of the Electoral College it was easy to understand its implications. in the context of the election I believe the Electoral College will vote to confirm the election of Joe Biden. The election results will not be overturned in Trump’s favor. My support for this interpretation comes the entire December set of tarot cards. The two cards before the Tower and the card after Tower have encouraging connotations with literal titles, “Victory”, “Strength” and “Happiness”. I associate these sentiments with the Biden election. The Tower card stands apart as the lone picture of an unwelcome ending.

Short Diversion About Strength Card

The Strength card is interesting because both the imagery of the bow with nine burning wands as well as the burning scroll could indicate some legislative event. If Trump’s appeals are pursued it could mean an event with the Supreme Court (9 wands = 9 justices, burning scroll hits me as a legal document). I’m not worried that there will be any action forthcoming from the Supreme Court to overturn the election but the effort will be trying for the collective thus requiring strength. End of diversion.

Meaning of the Tower Card for Electoral College

What this Tower card does show us is the emotional impact of the decision. President Trump expects a reversal of the election, at any cost. Scorched Earth. Burn it all down. Rage against the results. The Tower card comes from the part of the tarot deck known to represent milestones in growth. When these growth cards appear it reveals the emotional temperature of the room rather than a literal event. Thus, in this reading I interpret Tower to mean that the finality of the election sinks in with President Trump, the GOP, and his supporters.

When Trump realizes he’s out of moves on December 14, that collective realization and subsequent release of human emotion (disbelief, outrage, betrayal, etc) injects itself into our system. It’ll be like TNT going off.

Given Trump’s indication that he’d vacate the White House upon confirmation of the Electoral College vote for Biden I do take this as further confirmation Trump has reached the end. Not only is it confirmation that Trump’s efforts are over and that he’s leaving the White House but the emotional consequences of this ending. There will be a release of energy, likely from Trump supporters, into homes, community, cities and so on. How this release ripples through the collective remains to be seen but my familiarity with the hermetic meanings of this cards along with the sequence in which this card presented itself tells me that on the whole this Tower moment is a net positive. There is a gigantic clue in the fourth and final card for this series, The Aeon.

I’ll write more about the meaning of Aeon in the final post in this series.

12/12/20 UPDATE

Tonight two headlines caught my attention and reminded me of the raging wild hog at the centerpiece of this blog post. On November 29, 2020 I wrote: