This Day
And The Tower
I ran across1 the following quote from Hermann Hesse recently:
“This day will never come again, and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today. You must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.”
To explore the quote with the Tarot, I shuffled my deck and drew The Tower:
While I find Mr. Hesse’s words quite uplifting, I find The Tower to be quite the opposite. In reading the quote, my mind pictures The Sun, alas, we are met with the destruction symbolized by The Tower instead.
Certainly though, the card and the quote go together perfectly, just like my peanut butter and raspberry jam.
The quote is advice. Advice that, if followed, will allow us to live a joy and gratitude filled life.
The card is a warning. A warning of what will happen if we don’t follow that advice.
And I find that warning to be spot on. If we do not embrace the day, all of the happiness we could have found in it will be lost, it will be destroyed. Ultimately, we are allowing a day, of which each of us have so few, to be wasted.
The Tower here reminds us, in the strongest way possible to embrace the day. To find within it that which will make us happy. To, in the words of Mr. Hesse: “…play your part and sing a song, one of your best.”




I really enjoy your explorations of quotes through tarot. They always deepen my understanding of the cards. Thank you 🙏
Enjoyed reading this and I did wonder is the tower the powerful energy released when we live like Hesse's quote?