The Tower Tarot definitions

The collapse of a world view or belief. In a perfect world, this would be immediately replaced by a new view or belief, but life is not simple. Either the old views are tenaciously held onto, or there is a lack of belief or perception in the new. Either way, there is a hiatus until things settle down. The problem is that views and beliefs are closely related to self and identity, so that changes are seen as an attack on the self. There comes a point when gentle transformations get no result, so they become more violent, until the grip is loosed. By then of course, the results are more dramatic. The key is to be more sensitive to change and accommodate it, rather than rigidly to hold on to the past and its now irrelevant views. The more rigid the views and the inability to change them, the more catastrophic the outcome. Fanatics, terrorists etc, have extremely rigid views - so they expect all the non-believers to change, usually by force and coercion. On the other hand, the views of so many people are either wishy-washy or change with the zephyr. What is required is enough rigidity to stand up, but with some flexibility. The wings on an aeroplane are a good example.

A client with the Tower prominent in the past is an indication that they have not integrated or accepted a change in their perceptions. The Tower prominent in the future shows that views will change soon. Maybe they are already preparing for such an event, so it will beholden upon the tarot reader to help them face up to accommodate the change. In my experience change is rarely as bad as people think.

• Rider-Waite: The Tower

  Occult explanations attached to this card are meagre and mostly disconcerting. It is idle to indicate that it depicts min in all its aspects, because it bears this evidence on the surface. It is said further that it contains the first allusion to a material building, but I do not conceive that the Tower is more or less material than the pillars which we have met with in three previous cases. I see nothing to warrant Papus in supposing that it is literally the fall of Adam, but there is more in favour of his alternative - that it signifies the materialization of the spiritual word. The bibliographer Christian imagines that it is the downfall of the mind, seeking to penetrate the mystery of God. I agree rather with Grand Orient that it is the ruin of the House of We, when evil has prevailed therein, and above all that it is the rending of a House of Doctrine. I understand that the reference is, however, to a House of Falsehood. It illustrates also in the most comprehensive way the old truth that "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

  There is a sense in which the catastrophe is a reflection from the previous card, but not on the side of the symbolism which I have tried to indicate therein. It is more correctly a question of analogy; one is concerned with the fall into the material and animal state, while the other signifies destruction on the intellectual side. The Tower has been spoken of as the chastisement of pride and the intellect overwhelmed in the attempt to penetrate the Mystery of God; but in neither case do these explanations account for the two persons who are the living sufferers. The one is the literal word made void and the other its false interpretation. In yet a deeper sense, it may signify also the end of a dispensation, but there is no possibility here for the consideration of this involved question.

  Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe.

  Reversed Card meanings

  According to one account, the same in a lesser degree; also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.

• Book of Thoth: The Tower

  Break down the fortress of thine Individual
  Self, that thy Truth may spring free from the
  ruins.

  Quarrel, combat, danger, ruin, destruction of plans, sudden death, escape from prison.

  The Tower represents war, destruction, but also spiritual renewal. Plans are disrupted. Your views and ideas will change as a result.

  More information

• Golden Dawn - Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty

  Ambition, fighting, war, courage. Destruction, danger, fall, ruin.

• Mathers: THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER

  Ruin, Disruption, Overthrow, Loss, Bankruptcy.

  Reversed Card meanings

  These in a more or less partial degree.

• Etteilla: Misery

  Distress, Indigence, Poverty, Dearth, Need, Destitution, Catastrophe, Adversity, Misfortune, Pain, Torment, Sadness, Affliction, Trouble, Punishment, Thrashing, Chastisement. Awakening, Disgrace. Severity, Inflexibility, Harshness.

  Reversed Card meanings

  Imprisonment, Detention. Arrest, Captivity, Oppression, Tyranny, Chains, Subjection, Constraint.

• Thierens: XVI. The Tower. Uranus

  "Occult explanations attached to this card are meagre and mostly disconcerting." (W.) The reason for this is easily seen: the principles of Uranus and Neptune were not much known in antiquity save that they were the general principles of the Heavens (the Air or also the atmosphere) and the Ocean, and as such we find them in the Pantheon and in the original Tarot, not yet as the much later discovered planets, which personify these general cosmic principles. Later ages added very little, if anything at all, to those original explanations. Still Ouranos and Poseidon were known in Greece as well as Dourga and Varouna in India.

  And the stone tower struck by a flash of lightning is another version of the legend of Ouranos mutilating his son Chronos, which means, that Heaven is not content with a body of fixed dimensions and form, nor any heavenly force with the limitations put to it by physical authorities or architects. This may warn man, not to build upon physical existence alone or to think himself safe upon a material basis, however high and solid it may appear from a material point of view. The general meaning, however, is not incidental but essential. ". . . the ruin of the house of life, when evil has prevailed therein" (W.) is one of many possible occurrences; it may signify 'blighted ambitions and hopes,' etc. (P.), but the universal and every day significance is: the renewal of the form, or rather of embodied life, by the force of Heaven, and of microcosm by the life of macrocosm, which incidentally of course breaks up forms here and there, if they are no longer fit for survival; the house of doctrine as well as every structure made by vanity, dogmatism and separativeness.

  The Hebrew letter Ayin is addicted to this card. P. utterly fails in giving any elucidation of this relationship. W. has put it very clearly in this quotation: "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

  So the card of the Tower signifies the relation between macro- and micro-cosm and will mean rupture, sudden disillusion, disenchantment, but also it symbolises intuition, renewal, help from above and clear insight in relation to vanity and sham projects, illusion and meaningless formalism.

• Ouspensky: Card XVI - THE TOWER

  Sectarianism. Tower of Babel. Exoterism. Confusion of tongues. Fall of exoterism. The force of Nature re-establishing the truth distorted by men.

  ---

  I saw a lofty tower extending from earth to heaven; its golden crowned summit reached beyond the clouds. All round it black night reigned and thunder rumbled.

  Suddenly the heavens opened, a thunder-clap shook the whole earth, and lightning struck the summit of the tower and felled the golden crown. A tongue of fire shot from heaven and the whole tower became filled with fire and smoke. Then I beheld the builders of the tower fall headlong to the ground.

  And the voice said: -

  "The building of the tower was begun by the disciples of the great Master in order to have a constant reminder of the Master's teaching that the true tower must be built in one's own soul, that in the tower built by hands there can be no mysteries, that no one can ascend to Heaven by treading stone steps.

  "The tower should warn the people not to believe in it. It should serve as a reminder of the inner Temple and as a protection against the outer; it should be as a lighthouse, in a dangerous place where men have often been wrecked and where ships should not go.

  "But by and by the disciples forgot the true covenant of the Master and what the tower symbolized, and began to believe in the tower of stone, they had built, and to teach others to so believe. They began to say that in this tower there is power, mystery and the spirit of the Master, that the tower itself is holy and that it is built for the coming Master according to His covenant and His will. And so they waited in the tower for the Master. Others did not believe this, or interpreted it differently. Then began disputes about the rights of the summit. Quarrels started, 'Our Master, your Master,' was said; 'our tower, your tower.' And the disciples ceased to understand each other. Their tongues had become confused.

  "You understand the meaning here? They had begun to think that this is the tower of the Master, that He builds it through them, and that it must and, indeed, can be built right up to Heaven.

  "And you see how Heaven responded?"