The Tower: Marseille vs Virtually All Others

Kingdubrock

Never really liked the RW, Crowley or Swiss decks I had access to growing up. Once I saw the Marseille cards I was pretty much done with other decks.
However, like many people (I would assume), I always tended to read the tower card with "tower of destruction" influenced interpretations. Simply out of prior conditioning and habit. Despite the fact that the card is often made less upsetting or frightening with talk about "great change" or whatever, it rarely seems to stop the card from hitting the amygdala or "fight or flight" part of the brain prior to any positive spin one may put on it. At least with anyone I have read or know who has had a reading.


It wasn't until I read Jodorowsky's book that I was startled into seeing it much differently. He pointed out that the people are not particularly terrified, and seem to be floating down or hovering and, sort or, relating to or touching the plants on the ground. The "mana" or "atoms" in the sky are round, not bricks. The Crown on the top of the tower could be seen as opening and not necessarily being knocked off. As well, thats some pretty fluffy swirly looking lightening. Jodorowsky's actual interpretation is not, for me, the point as much as the fact that what he pointed out about the details made me realize i was projecting on the card based on other peoples interpretations and other decks.
Moreover, in the Noblet and Dodal decks which are older than the Conver, the fire or energy or whatever is actually shooting up out of the tower. Once I saw that, not only was I no longer affected by the typical readings, I started to see them as a potentially confusing and unfortunate distortion which dominates the majority of modern decks.

Even if we look at some Visconti style images, which do feature lightening striking the tower more explicitly, it still seems to have a different energy. In one featured on Flornoy's site, there are no people falling. In another I've seen, the people are falling but actually still have that floaty and not scary or catastrophic expressions and gestures. In the Vieville deck its not even a tower but a tree and the "lightening" doesnt look like lightening at all (although Mr Flornoy seemed willing to call it lightening). But again, not a very tragic or chaotic looking card.

One could do a similar comparison with cards like the "magus", the "high priestess", "death" and so on. The RW seems to have hijacked the entire Tarot enterprise.

I guess what I don't understand is if modern decks still patten themselves after the Marseille, why havent issues like this attracted more discussion or debate? Its not as if the most prominent writers in the field have never seen these older decks. I dont begrudge people wanting modern decks, with whatever imagery turns them on. People can perform divination with almost anything really. So why cling to the old (ancient) pattern if one is not interested in what it actually shows, or revisiting "card meanings" when new information and research comes along? It kind of reminds me of when certain "occultists" and new Agers still talk about Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism, despite what we now know, as if the Caricatures created by folks like Blavatsky, Bailey and Rampa and Victorian "orientalism" haven't been discredited.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

http://tarot-history.com/Pages-vrac/Pages/Why-call-it-Maison-Diev.html
 

Kuroga

I surely cannot shed some light, but this is a very interesting topic :)

I agree with your concerns with the tower, which is one of the cards that I understand the less. And I agree, the two personages in the card do not seem to be scared or worried, it is almost like they are dancing or walking on their hands (in my Hadar deck, at least).

Also, I have always seen something sexual in the card and looking at your link I realise that this is much more accentuated in the Hadar deck than in the decks on the webpage you link. In one reading to a relative of mine, the card (rx) did indicate sexual problem, as he told me months after the reading when he found out that the reason why him and his wife could not have babies was 'his problem'. In the Hadar, there is also a thin green flash that goes around the 'ribbon' between the tower and the sun, and it goes very clearly from the tower to the sun (http://www.tarotpassages.com/images6/HadarXVI.JPG , the one on the right). Also, the white space between the 'ribbon' and the tower here is filled with thin black lines, which also seem to go from the tower to the sun. The relationship between the source of power and the tower here seems to be more a two way thing, rather than light and fire burning down the tower.

For what concerns modern decks and Marseille, well, I think you said it: people do divination with virtually everything, and I think if you like the cards and feel comfortable with them you will find meanings and the reading will flow. Then I think it is very hard to find the complexity and the abundance of levels of meaning that there is in TdM in other modern decks. If on one hand this is a plus, because to an accurate reader there are plenty of elements to be caught in a TdM reading, on the other it makes getting to know the cards well quite hard, which can be discouraging for many people.
I used RWS in the past, I like it, but TdM is the only deck that I felt studying 'seriously' and for which I feel the learning curve to be the most challenging.
 

dancing_moon

I agree with Kuroga on this one - the card can read whatever you read into it. In particular, because it's virtually impossible to determine what the 'original' idea was. And the rough style of woodblock print pictures doesn't really allow to 'objectively' assess what emotions and movements are depicted.

He pointed out that the people are not particularly terrified, and seem to be floating down or hovering and, sort or, relating to or touching the plants on the ground.

Or they might not look terrified because the size of the picture left no room for the proper depiction of their faces. And by their position it's really hard to tell if they're floating down or falling down abruptly.

So personally, I don't see any cheating here on the part of the GD or any other authors. :) The pictures are quite ambiguous as they are, and many people choose to conjure their own symbolism instead of trying to determine the original idea.
 

DavidMcCann

You've got three possibilities here, as I see it.

1. The occult packs usually follow the North Italian / French tradition of the Tower struck by lightning, or even just the lightning (Flemish tarot). The Steele MS (Ferrara) actually calls it the Thunderbolt. Hence Tower of Babel, pride before a fall, etc. The obvious question, from the point of view of the sequence, is why a disaster should follow Death and the Devil.

2. Then you have the alternative occult tradition which takes it as enlightenment, best shown in Robert Place's Alchemical tarot. This fits better with the following Star.

3. Finally, you have Paul Huson's theory that the card represents the Harrowing of Hell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_hell
This fits the sequence: you have Death, the Devil, and then release from purgatory. In support:
- the title in central Italy was originally the Gate of Hell or the House of the Devil
- the Sicilian and "Charles VI" cards have no lightning
- the Minchiate shows a woman fleeing out of a burning doorway
- Catelin Geoffroy represented it by Orpheus and Eurydice.

I'd take it as a turning point after the Devil: release, liberation, enlightenment; the disaster is best kept for the reversal.
 

Richard

......I guess what I don't understand is if modern decks still patten themselves after the Marseille, why havent issues like this attracted more discussion or debate? Its not as if the most prominent writers in the field have never seen these older decks. I dont begrudge people wanting modern decks, with whatever imagery turns them on. People can perform divination with almost anything really. So why cling to the old (ancient) pattern if one is not interested in what it actually shows, or revisiting "card meanings" when new information and research comes along?......[/url]
Some people discovered profound meaning implicit in the very structure of the Tarot deck. This had a certain impact on the images and their interpretation, which led to the creation of the Rider-Waite and other modern decks. To some extent this process was creative and visionary, but it cannot be discussed further without going off topic for this forum.
 

Kingdubrock

I appreciate the feedback folks. Thank you.
 

KurtM55

What I find to help in my looking at the card is that many decks don't call it the tower but the house of God. To me that indicates a certain sense of fate, beyond our control.
 

Kingdubrock

What I find to help in my looking at the card is that many decks don't call it the tower but the house of God. To me that indicates a certain sense of fate, beyond our control.

Understood. And in a way, "beyond our control" even seems to be relevant to what decks like the Dodal and Noblet suggest.
However, if Flornoy is to be believed or at least entertained, the nature of this card in the decks he focused on, shows that the overpowering forces come from within rather than god or external circumstances, as portrayed by the flames shooting upward from the tower - analogous perhaps (although he doesnt appear to say as much) to kundalini.
He even goes as far as to suggest that the broken line on the outline of one of the figures heads (in the Dodal deck) represents a hole in the fontanel.

As a possible basis for this he makes a reference to an influence or exchange between Sufism, possibly from Syria and Christian orders.

Who knows though?

But lets say he's onto something. Some poor schmo is getting a reading, sees some catastrophic tower card in the spread, reinforced by a reader raised on 20th century attributions and walks out of there thinking disaster will strike at any minute. Whn in fact it could suggest sudden and rapid inner growth or insight. Sort of a drag, no?
 

dancing_moon

But lets say he's onto something. Some poor schmo is getting a reading, sees some catastrophic tower card in the spread, reinforced by a reader raised on 20th century attributions and walks out of there thinking disaster will strike at any minute. Whn in fact it could suggest sudden and rapid inner growth or insight. Sort of a drag, no?

Strictly IMHO, there's no 'universal, all-powerful meaning' to each Tarot card, regardless of the deck and the reader. If this particular reader always reads disaster in this card, then this card will always come up in their readings when a disaster is about to strike. Perhaps, other cards in their deck will talk about rapid inner growth and insight.
 

Kingdubrock

Strictly IMHO, there's no 'universal, all-powerful meaning' to each Tarot card, regardless of the deck and the reader. If this particular reader always reads disaster in this card, then this card will always come up in their readings when a disaster is about to strike. Perhaps, other cards in their deck will talk about rapid inner growth and insight.

Interesting thought. :)
Interestingly though, i think it was in the documentary, Enrique mentioned that almost invariably, the people he is reading gasp when they see that card. That has been my experience as well, including, as i mentioned, my own earlier reactions to it. To the extent that tarot has entered popular consciousness that card is one of the ones that have a "bad omen" vibe. It almost doesn't matter what meanings we intellectually or deliberately attribute to it. Despite the many alternative descriptions of that card I had heard most of my life, I was still like, "doh!" whenever it came up in a reading. :D

It doesnt now, but only because I have become accustomed to the Noblet and Dodal depictions (and jodorowsky's discussion of it).
Conversely, however, now that I think of it, Le pendu strikes me differently, not necessarily in an awful way, having seen these decks. The way the hands are dangling behind the shoulders (and what you would have to do to the arms to make that happen) and the protruding tongue do exude more of the torture involved. I was watching a documentary about Hindu art where someone is explaining that the bulging eyes and protruding tongues (that we see in depictions of wrathful deities and spirits) occur with unpreserved bloating corpses and are incorporated for their unsettling effect and association with that.