The Tower and the Fool

The Tower and the Fool: A Kabbalistic Exegesis on the Life of Donald J. Trump

The man in the red tie—long as a phallus, longer than a noose—stalks the stage of history as if it were a cheap casino carpet. He raises his hand in benediction, in command, in sale. This is not the benediction of Moses who split the sea; this is the benediction of Mammon. To gaze at Donald Trump is to stare into the Qliphoth, the husks that cling to the Tree of Life, the residues of divine energy which have rotted, fermented, and become corruption. Yet we must look, because in looking we learn what the Tree of Life is not, and therefore what it is.

The Kabbalists say that each man is a letter, and that each letter has its numerical value, and that each numerical value reveals a secret. Donald John Trump:

• Donald = 4 + 50 + 40 + 30 + 4 = 128.
• John = 10 + 50 + 8 + 50 = 118.
• Trump = 400 + 200 + 6 + 40 + 80 = 726.

128 + 118 + 726 = 972. In Hebrew gematria, 972 collapses to 9 + 7 + 2 = 18. Eighteen is חי, “Chai,” life itself. How terrible the joke, how precise the irony! The man whose name reduces to “Life” built his empire on bankruptcy and towers of debt, his gold plated with tarnish, his wives replaced like the temple’s curtains. Life, yes—but a parody of life, a carnival mask.

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Consider his birth: June 14, 1946, beneath Gemini, the Twins. Here already is the duplicity, the double face, the Janus of Fifth Avenue. On one side, the cherubic boy, the patriot who declares he will make America great. On the other, the satyr who lusts, grabs, mocks. The Sephira of Hod (Glory) lies in Gemini’s shadow; Hod is intellect, the power of rhetoric, of persuasion, but when corrupted it becomes trickery, endless chatter, slogans and jingles: You’re fired!—that spell which America’s millions learned to chant as though it were the Tetragrammaton itself.

In youth, he was sent to the Military Academy. Mars ruled him early: discipline, uniform, parade. Yet the martial spirit never became Chessed (Mercy). It calcified into Geburah (Severity), but Geburah inverted: cruelty without justice, power without restraint.

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The Tarot offers him many guises. He is The Fool, stepping off the cliff with dog and knapsack, grinning as though gravity itself were beneath him. He is also The Tower, struck by lightning, disgorging its tenants, flames licking heaven. And still he is The Sun, for his followers see him as radiant, a child riding the white horse, halo of orange hair blazing like a false aureole. Fool, Tower, Sun—three trumps for Trump.

But the most telling is The Magician. Before him lies the table: cup, sword, wand, pentacle. He raises one finger heavenward and one downward: as above, so below. Except his table is a podium, his wand a microphone, his pentacle a stack of dollar bills, his chalice a plastic cup of Diet Coke. He channels not divine will but the collective hunger for spectacle. This, too, is magic. Even the black magician serves God, said Crowley, though he knows it not.

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Now Vollmann would demand that we look not only at symbols but at facts, smells, people bruised underfoot. Consider Atlantic City: the casinos yawning like sick whales, workers laid off, contractors unpaid, the poor seduced into dropping their wages into rigged machines. Consider the women: Ivana whispering about rape in the divorce deposition, Stormy Daniels with her silence bought in gold. Consider the migrant workers in his towers: Polish men in asbestos dust, undocumented, vanishing like ghosts, their wages skimmed.

And yet, the people. The old woman in Ohio who clutched her Trump sign like a rosary. The coal miner in West Virginia who believed the golden-haired tycoon would descend into the pit with him. The Christian who declared that God had chosen this unlikely vessel, this cracked pot, to hold His wine. Did they not, in their blindness, reveal the strange truth? For even the husks (Qliphoth) are vessels. The divine light, shattered in the beginning, hid within them. Trump, like a golem of clay and straw, staggers forward animated by sparks of holiness misplaced.

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The Kabbalists say that redemption comes through tikkun olam, repairing the world. But first, the shards must be exposed. Trump is that exposure. He reveals the cruelty of capital, the racism of the republic, the lust and the greed beneath the marble floors. He does not hide it with the velvet glove; he flaunts it, makes it costume jewelry. In that sense, he is an agent of the divine plan: to show the disease so that the body may bleed it out.

In his presidency we saw Malkuth—the Kingdom—corrupted. The throne itself became a gilded toilet seat. Yet above Malkuth lies Yesod, the foundation, the world of dreams and images. Trump spoke to Yesod. He spoke in dreams: walls, victories, greatness, the return of a mythic America. Dreams are truer than policies; the people loved him for his lies because they matched their inner fables.

Above Yesod lies Tifereth, beauty, the harmony of the human heart. Here Trump could not reach. His face—orange, bloated, sneering—repelled beauty. His soul was too coarse. The path between Yesod and Tifereth is the path of death, the card of Scorpio, and perhaps this is his destiny: to serve as death’s herald, the death of illusions, the death of civility.

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And Crowley whispers: Every man and woman is a star. Trump is a star, though a fallen one. His constellation is not the subtle silver of Nuit, but the vulgar neon of Times Square. He is the star that blinds, that advertises, that flickers on cheap motels. Yet still a star. Do not deny it. Thelema teaches that each star must pursue its True Will. Trump’s Will is dominion, attention, applause. He pursues it with the fervor of a monk chanting the Divine Name. In this sense he is more sincere than his critics: he wants power, he seeks it, he devours it. He does not veil the desire under a pretense of charity.

So what lesson do we glean from his life? Perhaps this: that the Path is perilous, and that even Life (חי) can manifest as Death, even the Tree can rot, even the Fool can ascend the throne. But also: that nothing is wasted. Trump’s excess, vulgarity, destruction—these too are sparks. The initiate must learn to look at the tower falling, the casino burning, and say: This, too, is God.

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He was born beneath Gemini. He may die beneath Scorpio. The Tower will fall again. And from its ruins perhaps something new may be built—not gilded, not gaudy, but humble, hidden, a true Kingdom. Until then, Donald John Trump, 972, Chai, Life-as-parody, lurches across the stage with his red tie swinging like a serpent, a false Messiah, yet still a vessel for the Holy One, Blessed be He, who works His will through the foolish, the grotesque, and the damned.