The Twin Towers in New York City stood as a symbol for America. But their destruction has moved them into the realm of myth... They seem to mean more to us now that they are gone, And just like nightmares often hidden messages from the subconscious, events in our lives can have archtypal significance.

Open your storybooks to images of a tower... Many people will either remember the Biblical Tower of Babel or Rapunzel's tower of imprisonment...

Tower of Babel. According to Genesis, the builders wanted to build a tower that could reach to Heaven and become famous (see Genesis 11:1-9). God changed the builder's language, and separated. Later God destroyed a third of the tower by fire, another third was "swallowed by the Earth" and the remnants were left as a symbol.

A symbol of what? Hubris? Pride? I find it's destruction quite interesting, since instead of using the typical arsenal of plagues, heavenly fire, etc. God simply got everyone miscommunicating with each other. And miscommunication lead to misunderstanding, which probably lead to the wars mentioned in the Bible after this story.

Keep this mind while we look at other symbolic interpretations of towers...

Rapunzel. In an attempt to selfishly possess her great beauty, Rapunzel is locked away in a tower without doors. But love, with the help from fate or the supernatural, gets in anyway. Rapunzel eventually leaves this tower for the castle tower of her suitor/prince.

So here we have the symbol of the transformation of the two towers: One tower a symbol of selfishness and exploitation. The other tower an opposite symbol of love and the respect of Rapunzel's new independence.

One other symbol you may note by looking at the images of the Tower, a trump card in most tarot decks. (Note, in particular, the painting by Audrey of a piano on fire … perhaps a symbolic destruction of the cerebral aspects of civilized society?) Typical interpretation of this card goes along the lines of destroying something that is in the way in order to make room for something better... the "two tower transformation" idea.

However, as you look at the various artistic interpretations, you see more of the destruction and less of the transformation. But this is pretty typical of humans. After the initial shock of the 9.11 attacks, we focused on the destruction and went to war.

But in order to focus on the transformation power of the symbol, we need to realize meaning of the symbol. What did the World Trade Center symbolize? Economic wealth (bought by the exploitation of much of the rest of the world)? † National pride (with governmental policies that call into question our ethics)? The American Way?

Fast food chains, notwithstanding, America has created some remarkable things. The pinacle is a very stable civilization that people from all over the world can be integrated. Americans, in general, has a pretty good track record for tolerance and magnanimity.

However, I wonder if there were messages from our unconscious that we weren't listening to until the towers collapsed? Messages that perhaps we need to seriously reign in our exploitation of other countries and our environmental resources. Messages that may be turning a blind eye to the concept that the democracy that we often inflict on other countries may be just a ploy to put "our own people" in charge.

The problem with messages from the collective subconscious is that they need to be heard by the collective conscious, and that takes a lot of people hearing.

† Our overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination-- that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible, and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of [U.S.] foreign plicy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops, the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of resources.