Tarot Tuesday - The Tower
The Tower looms over the Major Arcana at number 16 and is associated with the element of Fire and the planet Mars.
History
Some of the early printed Decks, like the Visconti-Sforza Deck, don't actually contain The Tower. Once The Tower became a fixed card, it's name and design varied drastically from Deck to Deck. The Belgian Tarot and the Jacques Viéville Tarot called the card La Foudre or La Fouldre, which means The Lightning and the typical depiction was that of a tree being hit by lightning. The 17th century Tarot of Paris went away from this imagery, instead opting for the Devil beating drums before the mouth of Hell. It was the Tarot de Marseilles that combined the two images to give us The Tower that we are more familiar with today with a burning Tower that has been hit by lightning. There are some that relate the burning Tower imagery to the story of the Tower of Babel, where God destroys the Tower that humans had supposedly built to reach Heaven.
Pictured above...
The purpose of this section is to help you with your own interpretations.
In the card pictured above, we can see a fairy surrounded by fire. She is dressed in mostly harnesses with a tattered skirt and arm dressings. Her wings are thin and red as is her hair. Our fiery fairy is above a piece of burning parchment which reads:
Malleus
Maleficarum
Maleficas & earum
Heresim nit phramea
Potentifsima conterens
Which comes from the Hammer of the Witches. In the background, we can make out the outline of a pathway, leading to a foreboding looking Tower. The colouring of the card is mostly red/orange that gradually get darker.
Meaning
Like The Devil, The Tower is not a card that you want drawn upright. It for tells of impending accidents and damage that will impact you and/or your situation, you need to be prepared and the rest of this doesn't get any better! A catastrophe will happen, either soon or in the future, see the other cards or a separate reading to figure out how to avoid it or limit the damage. Destruction will come in regards to your situation, if your asking about something specific, brace yourself! Unexpected changes will happen and trying to stop them will make things worse, once these changes have occurred, you can start your renovation and rebuild.
Reversed Meaning
A reversed Tower is no better than an upright Tower. Illness will rear it's ugly head which will either affect you directly or impact your situation, it cannot be avoided. You will experience losses in relation to your situation, which will range from small to big, how you deal with the impact of said losses is down to you. As you try to move forward, you will encounter obstacles. It will be draining and tiering but you need to overcome them, the other cards in the reading may offer some guidance. If you are asking about a specific situation, drawing a reversed Tower means that the situation has become volatile or will become volatile soon. If you can, you need to remove yourself from the situation until you are in a safer, more stable place to deal with it. Forewarned is forearmed!
All in all, this is a card I hope you don't draw!
Before I forget, there will be some changes coming to Tarot Tuesday in the future so keep an eye out!
Blessings,
C )0(
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
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