La Maison Dieu - how may it be read?

jmd

La Maison Dieu - how may it be read? copy

This card often reminds me of the consequences of decisions - once a step along a path is taken, one's own environment becomes liberated: a spring cleaning.

Often the sexual allusions are made of this card, and the release of 'tension' through the culmination of the act. Personally, I have never in a reading as yet seen it in this manner, though can easily consider such in discussions.

In the thread on La Maison Diev, I mention that the image may stem from a pictorial representation of the falling of Egyptian temples as the Holy family entered those lands when fleeing Herod. In such a case, the card may also symbolically call to mind that illusions and false assumptions may be shattered by a simple act of being, and moving one's own location or viewpoint a little.
 

Sophie

I read it the other day as a sudden understanding of something that had bugged the querent for a long time. I've seen it as a massive dose of creative inspiration. I have had it myself as a release of tension - sexual, physical, creative. It can be a difficult, catastrophic card too, if the release comes in the middle of a difficult event.

It's a card I am getting on a regular basis at the moment, so I am striving to understand all its implications, but it's not easy. Are the people jumping out, being thrown or leaping? Perhaps a bit of both. But the flames look like petals, and that suggests ultimate joy.

Camoin and Jodo added a door - borrowed it from a Besançon deck, but they claim it was in the original Tarots de Marseille before the destruction of the old woodblocks. It's a door of initiation. But I find the card more mysterious without a door. Mysterious in the sense of carrying a spiritual mystery, something not hidden, but that can only be apprehended after initiation. The door makes it more obvious intellectually, but not spiritually. I think one must place the door there with one's beta mind, like the Papesse's egg.

A while ago I had a breaktrough with this card while reading a sentence in a book. I posted about it one this thread:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=34767
 

Little Baron

When I began to learn the tarot quite a few years ago, I saw the Tower as being a problematic card. Every deck I owned or bought, showed an image that became even more threatening and the interpretations from books were just as bleak. The card turned up just before a breakdown that I had over four years ago and readily became the 'oh shit' card.

But ... on to the Marseille 'La Maison Dieu'.

If I had no knowledge of the above and read this card intuitively and on image above (which I am trying to do), I would look at this card quite positively. Escpecially in the Ancient Tarot of Marseilles (LoS). The colours are bright and pretty. Even though I imagine that the top of the tower/house has been blown off, what seems to come from it is this beautiful shower of coloured balls or coins. Even though the people have posibly fallen or escaped from the house, it looks like they are scrambling for the balls like people do in films when thousands of pounds fly into the air from a suitcase.

The card on the whole is bright. Looking at the positive side to this card (the fortune that comes from the explosion), this card is no longer the 'oh shit' card for me - not from this deck anyway. I see fire (lightening), air (the flying balls), earth (the landscape) and water (the stream or river) in this card and it feels very whole. I would read it as something that needs to happen that cannot be stopped, something inevitable, something that a person needs to do, taking the rough with the smooth, nature. On a negative side, maybe doing things that hurt others to gain for yourself, unnecessary outbursts. Maybe it could also be telling the truth to someone; admitting something for the good of someone else, however bad it makes you look.

Yabs
 

Moonbow

One of the meanings of this card - to me, is the loss or destruction of something concrete and stable in life. The Tower seen as a home or dwelling would represent security, safety and relaxation, therefore this could be read as the destruction of those things or perhaps those feelings. I have never seen the 'flash' coming from the Sun as lightening, but it seems like more of a solar flare, which would mean that 'heaven' would have to be alot closer for this to happen. This brings us back round to Divine intervention (Act of God as it is called these days). Also I see this card as a kind of release of restrictions, the type where you perhaps want change but are unable to act for it to happen. In this case the Tower may appear as a reminder to act or a reminder that an event will happen and trigger action.

One of the most important aspects of the card - to me, is that these two people do not seem unhappy or hurt in any way. They have acceptance of the inevitable, perhaps they were even waiting for it to happen.
 

tmgrl2

Man/woman attempting to be equal with God?

and so...

we erect a tower, a pyramid, a church and temple...with spires climbing toward the heavens.

Then, somewhere along the way, we must fall...in order to understand...in order to see the folly of our "superior" thinking...to let go of faulty ideas ....

Vanity and pretention must be dropped in order for us to achieve spiritual growth.

We may approach God/ the Light, but not replace.

The tower's top, which looks like the crown of a king, is almost a metaphorical tumbling of power at the highest human level...even kings and people of power shall be humbled by what life must teach.

Also, sometimes, in order to move forward, to grow, we need to leave everything familiar behind and JUMP.

Then we can move forward to new understandings and peace.

We are more alike than we are different when it comes to having to experience Tower moments and periods in our lives. No matter what success, money, intellect, talent has "bought" for us, at the end of the day, we take off our clothes and stand "naked" and human, no different from others who may have more or less. Conversely, those who may "appear" to have been short-changed in life when it comes to health, money, talent, intellect, success....

Well...Perhaps there are riches there beyong any we could imagine, but we may not be able to "see" this if we only look at the outer material package.



I believe we are here to teach and to learn and at all times, we are both teachers and students ....The outer trappings may make us seem "different" but at the core, in our souls, we are more alike than different and must all suffer the pains of being born into this material plane.

terri
 

Sophie

tmgrl2 said:
The outer trappings may make us seem "different" but at the core, in our souls, we are more alike than different and must all suffer the pains of being born into this material plane.

I often see the Maison-Dieu as orgasm, which is a moment of complete surrender, of joining of the physical and the spiritual through the bonding in explosion of two bodies. So we might also say that we may also enjoy the pleasure of being born in this material plane ;) .
 

tmgrl2

Helvetica said:
I often see the Maison-Dieu as orgasm, which is a moment of complete surrender, of joining of the physical and the spiritual through the bonding in explosion of two bodies. So we might also say that we may also enjoy the pleasure of being born in this material plane ;) .

Letting go, then, here is an understatement, non, Helvetica??

Well put!

terri
 

kwaw

Ecstacy, orgasm, transcendence, flight, the kiss of god, the kiss of the beloved, fervent desire, arousal, yearning, movement from one level/plane to another, birth/death, inspiration, breakthrough, freedom.

Kwaw
 

full deck

The doors of perception blown open . . .

kwaw said:
Ecstacy, orgasm, transcendence, flight, the kiss of god, the kiss of the beloved, fervent desire, arousal, yearning, movement from one level/plane to another, birth/death, inspiration, breakthrough, freedom.
Forgive me Kwaw for borrowing the quote but it really reminded me of this article I had just read in the NY Times about the inventor of the drug "Ecstacy":

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30ECSTASY.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
(Mind you, I do not espouse the recreational use of drugs either.)
 

Satori

I too have never read this card as an orgasm or sexual culmination card. But I don't think that means it isn't such an experience....rather that my imagination to date hasn't needed the Tower to stand for this in order for me to get the message across to a sitter.

For me this card evidences the destruction of the systems of men. Once in a reading it came up to show that the administration of a college was defunct, and the President would be leaving. There would be a chain of events that would shake up and unsettle the administration, causing people to shuffle around jobs, create new jobs, create new leaders etc. Events unfolded as the reading predicted.

So Tower may be about the greater structures we as people try to create and enforce upon each other. I find the buoyancy of the figures to be in alignment with this, because the empire may fall, but the people will find new jobs, new homes, new places to be after the dust settles.

Because the building in the Noblet is not destroyed, but rather is blowing out the bad stuff I do feel that this is a cleansing and purifying process.

What is intersting to it is that it does have a Hanged Man in the Card, but not as a primary focus. In Tower, on the Noblet, a man is doing a hand stand, and we can only presume he has fallen out of the building...but he has landed, his safe return to the ground is insured. This fuels my ideas about the macrocosm being the focus of the Tower, structures, hierarchies and human networks seem to be the domain of the card.

In Hanged Man, where the Hanging One is the focus of the card, we are not at all certain of his condition or the outcome of his situation....we must depend upon the surrounding cards to see what is going to happen to her/him.