The "House Of God"
IT is interesting to me.... after having read the previous 12 pages of posts on the topic of the XVI Triumph, and a fascinating couple-hour journey IT has been, too.... i haven't read anything describing the interpretation that came to me in a recent meditation upon this image....
With the TdM image being called "The House Of God", i understand this term to be generally ascribed to a church, temple, or holy building.... and if the Tower structure is indeed representative of "The Church" of the contemporary period, then The Establishment Church is clearly topped with a Crown, ITself representative of monarchic political power, and the Crown is being blown off by a Divine bolt from the blue, forcing The Church's inhabitants to flee their untimely demises by egress.... This righteous fire-from-above would seem to send a clear message of the Almighty's attitude towards the established collusive entity comprised by the close economic ties between the Catholic Papal structure and the various monarchic governmental systems ordained with spiritual authority....
The fleeing folks are forced out into The World, with ITs hills and grass and Nature, there perhaps to redefine their faith-&-belief structure in terms of a "re-entrance" into The World, the original and perennial "House Of God" from which they have been cloistered by church-and-state politics for so long that they had forgotten what natural spirituality was all about.... until a catalyst of holy fire brought an unavoidable egress back out into the True House Of God.... a pictoral transmission of the timeless aphorism, "The Church is not the building; The Church is the people...."
IT seems to me that this image, in conjunction with this particular title heading, is potentially quite countercultural for the time, and might reflect a populist (or possibly Gnostic / Hermetic) statement of the period....
peace
Nolan ;-)