Good Tower/Bad Tower

A Tower can be a marvellous card. Depending on the cards surrounding it. A card by itself doesn't mean anything.

The Marseilles decks don't have this terrible bolt of lightening striking a tower and having people falling to their deaths. This, I think was Waite's doing. He (or the artist) put his own fears into the meaning of this card - like Freud put his own sexual fantasies into a lot of what he said about children and their sexual growth.

In the Marseilles decks, there is no lightening. There is a bolt of what I call en-lightenment (it doesn't look like lightening at all - it looks like something powerful, but it is not lightening) striking a Tower (it's called often the Maison-Dieu which means the House of God), and, with this energy, releases two men from the prison of their own making. They fall pretty hard, but on soft ground, and there are yods (I interpret them as manna) falling from the sky onto the ground.

The Kris Hadar deck is even more interesting, because there is also something additional that looks vaguely like lightening, but it is actually an arrow, and it is not coming from the sun, but is actually coming out of the tower and points up to the sun that is pouring down it's energy.

However, in a health or a financial reading, if the Tower appears, I would take very rapid steps to check on my health and my finances.

But most times, the Tower doesn't bother me. Yesterday, I had it, and by evening I realised, that due to a book I had been reading, that some of my comfortable little convictions had been destroyed in one swoop of a pen, and now I have to rearrange certain of my beliefs. I went to bed feeling very happy indeed.

I do not think of 9/11 when I see it. Although I, like many people, found it in my spreads which I did on the situation at the time.

juice said:

I would like to make a subtle note on possible Tower event. Marriage.

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Great point. Another stressful, turn-your-life-upside-down, not-quite-what-you-thought event is parenthood. That could be tower event too.

I guess I would see The Lovers as the "marriage" one... and not just in the obvious sense. In the old decks, there are three figures - the man, his lover, and his mother... and he is choosing to leave home (mother) and start a family, leaving childhood behind... so the Lovers is very much about the radical changes that come with major life choices, particularly marriage, and not just about being in love.

As for having kids... well, the major changes are anticipated by the time the child arrives... so the "I'm pregnant!" moment could be the Tower or the 9 of Cups, depending... not to mention all the many fertility cards, or the Moon for women who are just suspecting.

I believe that it's not a good idea to try to ascribe a meaning to a card that's "stretching it," if I'm not making a connection with what the card means, or maybe because there was something I wanted or expected to see in the reading. For me anyway, it usually turns out that I didn't understand what the cards were telling me (usually because they were addressing something other than the question I asked).

Doesn't everybody have certain cards that just give you an immediate gut reaction as soon as they turn over, regardless of the context? I sure do. I have a friend that just HATES the Moon card, it's always bad news when it turns up in her readings. To me, the Moon is an ambivalent card - some good things about it, some bad, some not easily categorized as either. I'm broad in my interpretation of the Moon card, depending on context - she's as rigid on that one as I am about the Tower. And when SHE reads MY cards, I think it's right to go with the way she interprets them.

Diana, there's a great page on the history of the Tower card at: http://www.tarothermit.com/tower.htm

It was originally called "the house of the Devil," not the "House of God." Pretty interesting.

I have to agree with Juice about marriage & The Tower as I have seen it appear under such circumstances. Life changes are accompanied by a level of stress & a period of adjustment whose magnitude depends on the nature of the event & how the individual responds to the change. An event can be experienced on an inner level &/or from the exterior. Thus, The Tower has appeared for an unexpected pregnancy; a change or loss of a job; sudden change in managemnt at workplace; separation &/or divorce; a change of residence; receiving dubious news; even a phone call from someone who "never" calls...All of those instances had at least one other card with The Tower that related.

I've been doing some thinking on this subject and, honestly, the Tower itself isn't really good or bad.

IMO it does indicate some sort of quick, radical change is going to occur. I see it indicating the change coming so quickly it'll make your head spin. However, it's the cards around the Tower that say whether the change is positive or negative.

As I stated earlier in this thread, the fact that people tend to view change as a bad thing makes the Tower a bad card in people's mind. However, there are people who welcome change or simply handle change better than others. To those people the Tower event may not be as bad - though it will result in quick adjustments to get through the event.

Diana said:

A Tower can be a marvellous card.
I do not think of 9/11 when I see it.

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The Tower is a marvellous card.

However, while watching airplanes crash into the World Trade Center live and in colour on my television, I felt I had witnessed The Tower archtype manifest in the physical world. In other words, America had just been dealt The Tower. For this reason, within days, I changed The Tower card in Major Tom's tarot to include the WTC.

I think the Tower can indicate both good and bad, just like every other card in the deck.

I've always found this card a bit scary because it means a drastic change caused by forces outside our concious control.

Sept 11 Tower

dangerdork said:

to me the tower is always negative, and I have to bring this up : The Tower is September 11th.

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I agree Wholeheartedly. The Horrible events of September 11, especially the World Trade Center Towers are the essence of the Tower Card. I hope someone makes a deck portraying that image.
Please don't take that the wrong way- I still get upset whenever I think about it, and every Airplane I hear overhead makes me nervous.
But in my mind, there is no image you can use that would epitomize the Tower like the Twin Towers. I just hope that if someone does use it, they do it tastefully. It would not have to be all that graphic to get the meaning across.
That's just my two cents!

Re: tower / 9/11

lupo138 said:

First I want to state that this is not meant to hurt anybody´s feelings and my sympathies are with all who had to suffer a loss on or due 9/11. But do you really think that the tower applies to that date ? Of course, at first sight it seems more than obvious. Don´t you think that Death or Judgement would fit better ? I would say it is Judgement (of course a very very unfair, cowardish and evil judgement). What do you think ?

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Actually, the Tower, the Devil, Judgment, Justice, Death, and The Wheel are all potent symbols of that fateful day. All the energies of all the cards are present and accounted for. The truth of the matter is that the tower cards are notw symbolic of the terror that happened that day.

I have never felt the tower is always a bad card. Maybe not one I look at with pleasure when it comes up, like the four of wands, but not one of those "oh no" cards.

I wonder if how we feel about the tower ties into how we individually feel about sudden change? I actually handle unexpected change, good or bad, much better than changes I know are coming, since I tend to over-anticipate. So, when I see it come up, I think hmmm, the tower, how interesting.

War

I think it is interesting, and fitting if we are thinking about September 11, that Crowley subtitles the Tower card WAR.

This is where I go to read Crowley on his trumps:

http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/Crowley/thoth/majors.html