The Tower (Tarot card)
Encyclopedia
Trump Card
Trump Card was an American syndicated game show that aired from September 10, 1990 to September 6, 1991 and was hosted by Jimmy Cefalo. Debi Massey served as hostess and Chuck Reilly was the announcer. The show was produced by Telepictures Productions, Createl, Ltd., & Fiedler-Berlin Productions...
or Major Arcana
Major Arcana
The Major Arcana or trumps are a suit of twenty-two cards in the tarot deck. They serve as a permanent trump suit in games played with the tarot deck, and are distinguished from the four standard suits collectively known as the Minor Arcana...
card in most cartomancy Tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
decks. It is not used as part of any game.
History
This card follows immediately after The DevilThe Devil (Tarot card)
The Devil is the fifteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Symbolism :...
in all Tarots that contain it, and is considered an ill omen. Some early painted decks such as the Visconti-Sforza tarot do not contain it. Also, some Tarot variants used for game playing omit it.
Early printed decks that preserve all their cards do feature The Tower. In these decks the card bears a number of different names and designs. In the Minchiate deck, the image usually shown is of two nude or scantily clad people fleeing the open door of what appears to be a burning building. In some Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
tarots and the seventeenth century tarot of Jacques Vieville, the card is called La Foudre or La Fouldre, ("The Lightning") and depicts a tree being struck by lightning. In the Tarot of Paris (17th century), the image shown is of the Devil, beating his drums, before what appears to be the mouth of Hell; the card still is called La Fouldre. The Tarot of Marseilles
Tarot of Marseilles
The Tarot of Marseilles , also widely known by the French designation Tarot de Marseille, is one of the standard patterns for the design of tarot cards...
merges these two concepts, and depicts a burning tower being struck by lightning or fire from the sky, its top section dislodged and crumbling. Two men are depicted in mid-fall, against a field of multicolored balls. A. E. Waite's version is based on the Marseilles image, with bits of fire in the shape of Hebrew yod letters replacing the balls. (see Tower1 above right)
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
, where God destroys a tower built by mankind to reach Heaven. Alternatively, the Harrowing of Hell
Harrowing of Hell
The Harrowing of Hell is a doctrine in Christian theology referenced in the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed that states that Jesus Christ "descended into Hell"...
was a frequent subject in late medieval liturgical drama
Liturgical drama
Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements...
, and Hell could be depicted as a great gate knocked asunder by Jesus Christ, with accompanying pyrotechnics
Pyrotechnics
Pyrotechnics is the science of using materials capable of undergoing self-contained and self-sustained exothermic chemical reactions for the production of heat, light, gas, smoke and/or sound...
. The Minchiate version of the deck may represent Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
's expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
.
Divination usage
Some frequent keywords used by card readers are:- Chaos ----- Sudden change ----- Impact ----- Hard times
- Crisis ----- Revelation ----- Disruption ----- Realizing the truth
- Disillusion ----- Crash ----- Burst ----- Uncomfortable experience
- Downfall ----- Ruin ----- Ego blow ----- Explosive transformation
Upside down :
- To be currently in a harsh and chaotic situation but exiting in a good manner. Indeed you are falling but landing with your feet over the soil.
- The same of the normal position but less negative because their incorrect position can block some powers of the card.
Interpretation
Many differing meanings are attributed to the card:- To some, it symbolizes failure, ruin and catastrophe.
- To others, the Tower represents the paradigms constructed by the ego, the sum total of all schema that the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lightning when reality does not conform to expectation.
- Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and KundaliniKundaliniKundalini literally means coiled. In yoga, a "corporeal energy" - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, lies coiled at the base of the spine. It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent...
experiences may result. In the Triple Goddess Tarot, the card is named "Kundalini Rising". - The Tower further symbolizes that moment in trance in which the mind actually changes the direction of the force of attention from alpha condition (pointed mindward) to theta condition (pointed imaginal stageward). A Theta condition (especially in waking versions of theta states) is that moment when information coming into the ego-mind overwhelms external or sensory stimuli, resulting in what might otherwise be called a "vision" or "hallucination."
- Each card in the Major ArcanaMajor ArcanaThe Major Arcana or trumps are a suit of twenty-two cards in the tarot deck. They serve as a permanent trump suit in games played with the tarot deck, and are distinguished from the four standard suits collectively known as the Minor Arcana...
is a related to the previous ones. After the self bondage of The DevilThe Devil (Tarot card)The Devil is the fifteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Symbolism :...
, life is self correcting. Either the querents must make changes in their own lives, or the changes will be made for them. - The querentQuerentQuerent as "one who seeks" is derived, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from the Latin quærēns "seeker," the present participle of quærere "to seek, gain, ask."...
may be holding on to false ideas or pretenses; a new approach to thinking about the problem is needed. The querent is advised to think outside the box. The querent is warned that truth may not oblige schema. It may be time for the querent to re-examine belief structures, ideologies, and paradigms they hold to. The card may also point toward seeking education or higher knowledge. - Others believe that the Tower represents dualism, and the smashing of dualism into its component parts, in preparation for renewal that does not come from reified, entrenched concepts. The Ivory Tower as a parallel image comes to mind, with all its good parts and its bad parts.
Alternate Decks
- It is also called Le Maison Dieu ("The House of God").
- The "Flemish Deck" by Vandenborre (c.1750-1760) renames it Le Foudre ("The Thunderbolt"). It shows a frightened shepherd cowering under a burning tree split by a bolt of lightning while sheep graze at its base.
- In Anne RiceAnne RiceAnne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
Tarot deck the Tower card depicts Armand - In X/1999, the Tower is Tokiko Magami & Tooru Shirou (This makes Tower & Strength (featuring Yuzuriha Nekoi & Inuki) the only cards in the X tarot set that has more than one character, since the other cards has only one character for one card; the examples are that Kamui Shirou represents the Magician, Kotori Monou represents the Lovers, Subaru Sumeragi represents the Hanged Man, Seishirou Sakurazuka represents Death, Karen Kasumi represents Justice, Princess Hinoto represents the High Priestess, Kanoe represents the Empress, Arashi Kishuu represents Temperance, Satsuki Yatooji represents the Hermit).
- In the Mythic Tarot deck, the Tower is depicted by PoseidonPoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
.
In pop culture
- In the SNES video game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black QueenOgre Battle: The March of the Black Queenis a 1993 real-time strategy role-playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, directed by Yasumi Matsuno with artwork by Akihiko Yoshida...
, the Tower is depicted as an ominous-looking tower as lightning bolts strike it during a thunderstorm, yet there are no people jumping out of the tower. On drawing the Tarot card after liberation of one of the towns, it lowers the characters' alignment by 1 or 2 points, and summons an earthquake to damage enemy units when used in battle.