This year has been one of many conflicts. Social and political conflicts. Conflicts within various religions and religious groups. Conflict in general seems to have been the theme for the year. The approach has increased more and more to “divide and conquer” on both sides of all of them.
Being a person who lives in the US, this has been especially challenging. Not just from a living standpoint but from a community standpoint. The problems in the US are large and impact the rest of the world in varying ways, country to country. Each of us focused on the things that are impacting us and the communities we live within. I see people here standing up every day, fighting back in the ways they can, educating others with what they are actually seeing and experiencing, protesting – boycotting – and trying to build new structures from the ground up to counter the governments top-down approach. I also see a lot of comments from people outside the US saying we are not doing anything about the issues, lumping all of us together with the loud far-right saying we are “allowing” this. This puts those who are doing things, everyday, into a defensive mode or such frustration that they are giving up, creating more conflict.
If I had to sum up 2025 in one word it would be conflict – or from a pagan/ witchy standpoint, the Tower.
The Black Tower
I used to think of the process of the Tower from a narrow view – From the form of the Black Tower, because it is obvious – because it starts with a conflict. The steps are a patterned path.
It starts with a conflict. Whether this is an external conflict, a situation or conflict due to forces outside of ourselves – or an internal conflict, one that stems from within us, something that has become imbalanced or untrue for us over time.
We see the conflict and then move into the steps of the Black Tower:
1. Identify the surface of the conflict. We do this by seeing what has caused us to see it in the first place – a strong emotion we are feeling, a repeating pattern we are recognizing, a beliefs that does not hold true to the experience we are experiencing, a place of feeling “stuck” or trapped.
In this step we are just naming it, seeing it, identifying its beginning.
2. Next we start deconstructing it. Where did this come from? What caused the conflict within you – where is the imbalance coming from? Where have you felt this before – different situation but same feelings? How did you respond and what was the outcome?
Separating truth from conditioning. Many conflicts, especially internal ones, comes from a place where what we were taught does not match our lived experience. This is where heavy discernment is needed and the place that many get stuck – It requires being completely honest with ourselves, our past, and our true personal beliefs. It requires us to admit we were wrong, we made a mistake, and that is hard for some people – pride is hefty.
This is also where we spend a lot of time – tearing everything associated with it down to bone – to really see where it came from, what drove it, why we adopted it, and how we moved with it in our lives.
This stage also reveals something deep about us, our world, our society – There are many beliefs we hold that are just conditionings of our society. Things we were taught – how to think, how to act, how to be – to make us more palpable and accepted in the current society. We adopt them because they are given through authority and fear of consequences. Over time, we melted them into us, adopting them as us – but they aren’t. In order to deconstruct them, we must first see them for what they are.
3. Separate Survival from Identity, and have Compassion for the Self through the process. There are many conditionings we carry from childhood into adulthood, because they helped us to survive. We built walls, boundaries, and patterns of behavior to protect ourselves. Those patterns and cycles of thought and behavior served a purpose once, and it was needed. Is it still though? That becomes the question in this step – What is needed and what is holding me back? What was learned vs what is you.
Compassion for the Self is desperately needed here because what you find as you dig will most likely also carry anger, shame, and feelings of being “duped.” We can only feel these things now though because we are seeing through hindsight. We see what they have caused and how they shaped us, good and bad – yet we a taught to focus heavily on the negative aspects.
You did not know what you know now. You could not see where the action would lead to, just an idea based on assumption. You did the best you could with what you knew and had in the moment – accept the outcome, be honest about your parts (actions), and forgive yourself. You learned from it, grew from it, and you are now deconstructing it to change it. This is true inner strength and courage.
The past is learned from – the future is hoped for – living happens in the present.
4. Letting go and Healing. Let go of what no longer serves you. Let it go with gratitude, because it served a purpose once, good or ill, and you survived and learned from it. The past is done and unchangeable, but today, right now, you have the opportunity to change and shape what comes next.
5. Allow the shift. Change doesn’t happen through words, it happens through feeling it first and then living it.
At this point you have deconstructed, tore down the structures of it to see where it came from, understood why you adopted it, compared it to your lived experience and the outcomes of it, and looked at it through the eyes of now – does it still serve a purpose, is it true for your experience, or does it create conflict and hold you back?
Some foundations will stay because they hold true for you, they are still needed, and they came from you, not someone else. Some will stay in part, because some parts were good but others were bad. Some will be wiped off the board completely because they hold nothing for you anymore.
This is the beginning of reconstruction of the Self.
6. Bring it outward.
Through this work, our perspectives change – how we think and what we feel changes – and this flows out into our actions changing. It is not just a moment of understanding, it is a deep and long transformation within us. That transformation changes us at the core, changing how we move in our world/society/life, and that changes those things for us as a result.
Living those changes, letting them be the new form of who we are, changes not only how we see the world, but our world changes because of that. Small ripples coming out from us, shifting the energies around us, changing how we react and interact with others – changing how others interact and react to us – thus changing our outer world.
7. Understanding this process never ends. You worked through one layer, one conditioning, one adjustment. There many have been many parts to that, involving multiple threads of conditioning and beliefs, but not everything.
At some point another conflict will arise, that will show another crack, another misalignment within you or your world. That is how this works, it is a part of living. It will get easier each time, faster each time though, because you know the path, how you walk those steps, and what to expect as you do.
Two Towers: the Black and White
I started a journey 7 weeks ago – The Weaver’s Journey. Although the question that started it was not Tower related, one of the restructuring lessons within it was understanding that there are two Towers – one black and one white – for this kind of transformation work.
The Black Tower starts from a place of conflict and a movement of deconstruction.
The White Tower starts from a place of peace, of curiosity, and a movement of creation.
The steps within both are the same but the order of those steps change, what it fells like and looks like from a working standpoint is different. I will talk about the White Tower more later, but I thought that perhaps seeing the blueprint of the Black Tower might be useful for someone – considering all the conflicts we are facing, in different ways and different measures. Cracks are showing, and band-aids will not help us here if we are going to really heal.
The Weaver’s Journey
If you are interested in this journey, what it is, how I am doing it, and what has come up so far – I am sharing it on my YouTube channel. You can start with the video below and the rest are in that playlist. I am also sharing deeper dives and more personal parts within the Temple, with my community there.
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