House of God - literally?

BrightEye

I had the Tower come up in a reading recently, where I took it to mean, literally, the "house of God". I used a Marseille deck, where the card is sometimes called "la maison dieu". The reading was about religion, broadly speaking. I was thinking Tower = convent, monastery, church. What do you think?
 

willowfox

Tower signifies false beliefs being destroyed, the truth of these false teachings are being revealed for what they are, lies and fabrications.

Some believe that the Tower does represent the house of god and all the lies that it has been built upon.
 

BrightEye

Or the House of the Devil. In my ruminations on the subject, I also drew the Devil...


Found this in the Marseille forum:
Diana said:
A Maison-Dieu is the ancestor of our hospitals. Run by the Church and often attached to monasteries, they were used not only to house invalids and ill people, but also to shelter pilgrims and travellers on their journeys.

Today in France, there are still many hospitals called la Maison-Dieu, including one of the biggest hospitals in Paris.
 

kwaw

Turkish folk prayer (recited at end of meals)

Praying at the end of the meal is a common folk tradition, especially if the gathering is for some specific occasion such as a funeral, a wedding etc., and is considered a holy deed. The prayers reserved for this purpose are in verse form:

“Bismillahirrahmanirrahim
Bu sofra nur olsun
Gada bela dur olsun
Yiyene afiyet olsun
Gazanıp getirene
beytullah nasip olsun
Daşa dökülmeye
Arta eksilmeye
Bu eve yoksulluk girmeye
Lillahil fatiha”

"Bismillahirrahmanirrahim
May this table be filled with holy light
May illness and calamity remain far from it
May the food be palatable to the one who is eating it
May beytullah (God’s house) be home for those who earned it by the sweat of his brow
May the food be bountiful without waste
May it become more and not less
May this house remain free of poverty
Lillahil fatiha"

I had just been reading this prior to seeing this thread, having come across it while looking for at sites on turkish cuisine, so thought i may share it; the turkish word Beytuallah is clearly related to the arabic/hebrew bethel, as is in the stone anointed by Jacob as the house of god.

quote from:

http://www.turkish-cuisine.org/english/pages.php?ParentID=2&FirstLevel=12&SecondLevel=17&
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
I had just been reading this prior to seeing this thread, having come across it while looking for a turkish recipe, so thought i may share it; the turkish word Beytullah is clearly related to the arabic/hebrew bethel, as is in the stone anointed by Jacob as the house of god.

and refers in this case to the ka'aba which houses the black stone:

http://images.google.com/images?sou...&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone
 

Thirteen

BrightEye said:
I had the Tower come up in a reading recently, where I took it to mean, literally, the "house of God". I used a Marseille deck, where the card is sometimes called "la maison dieu". The reading was about religion, broadly speaking. I was thinking Tower = convent, monastery, church. What do you think?
Tarot cards were, sometimes, subversive and ways of putting out political feelings--so long as the printer of said cards didn't get caught at this and burned.

And back in the day, there were some hard feelings about the church which seemed to build up a lot of big cathedrals in places where people were homeless and hungry and could have used a new roof and a portion of that wealth. It was also seen that there was corruption among the clergy who preached about maintaining certain commandments and rules, but broke these themselves (like vows of chastity). So it doesn't surprise me that a card that came to mean a house of "falsehood" or something built on a falsehood might refer to a church.

This is not to say that it refers to a religion, per se, so much as an organized branch of that religion which has gotten powerful and forgotten the true word of god. The lightening bolt, after all, is often seen as the voice of god, and it is that bolt from the heavens which brings down the church. The card, in its way, warns those belonging to such organizations to stay true and honest.
 

canid

I never thought about that, thanks! Yes, it could mean "house of 'god'" ie "house of the devil", since he's the creator god of our physical world; the god of the Old Testament.
 

Thirteen

canid said:
I never thought about that, thanks! Yes, it could mean "house of 'god'" ie "house of the devil", since he's the creator god of our physical world; the god of the Old Testament.
Are you equating the Old Testament god with the Devil?
 

Rosanne

Very interesting Kwaw the prayer after meals.
May this table be filled with holy light
May illness and calamity remain far from it
May the food be palatable to the one who is eating it
May beytullah (God’s house) be home for those who earned it by the sweat of his brow
May the food be bountiful without waste
May it become more and not less
May this house remain free of poverty

The last line is interesting as in May this house.. Sounds like something that would be said in Italy as in 'my house- my dynasty' The house of Jacob- the annointed House- my families right to rule. It is said that a Tower was the symbol of a families power in Italy. Symbolically they threw the last deposed family member off their towers as an image of a dynasty dying or gone- exiled.
In regards to BrightEyes question - there is speculation that the Tower was on the Carthusian Monastery at the Certosa of Pavia in the Visconti deck.
It is also related to the Knights Templar and the Cathars perhaps. (the words Maison Dieu) In Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades- the area held by the Christians was called Acre and the Crusaders had a scriptorium- a large round tower as their headquaters and in slang with derision it was called God's House- meaning "Their God".
~Rosanne
 

canid

Thirteen, yes, I am.