The Tower
The Tower Card, or the Lightning Struck Tower is a common enough motif. I like the harsh, jagged edges of the Thoth Deck’s version, leaves me with imagery leftover from watching lightning strikes out on the plains. In the distance, hills with flashes of light turn the dark clouds lighter, if only for a moment — ponderous, thunderous clouds climbing into the sky.
There are various meanings, and one I try emphasize, the meaning of the card itself varies in its relationship with the cards in front and behind it, or above and below.
When I took the picture, I was pulling on a mental thread that had to do with 13th Century French epics, romance tales, about one of Arthur’s Knights, alternatively Parsifal, Percival, Parzival. From here, the trail gets tricky.
The Tower
In symbolism, the Tower stands for a fixed object, something that can’t be moved. Visit old ruins, and look at castles that withstood centuries, the old stone are still there.
In the usual imagery, there’s a lightening bolt striking the Tower, and figure is seen thrown? Dropped? Jumped? Shocked out of his place as guard on the Towner, and flailing midair, on his way down, headfirst.
The Tower
Meanings? I have singular prophecy stuck in my mind, as the Tower, the Lightning Struck Tower as it shows up. It’s about a psychological crisis. In some texts, the Tower is an edifice — structure — reality that is shattered, or least stirred and shaken to its core, and that’s the problem.
Fate deals an ugly hand? Sure there is that. Usually, though, it’s a confrontation with fixed, immovable object, and the obstacle persists. It’s about how we chose to negotiate a way around, through, or over that perceived obstacle. The psychological part of that, if it isn’t obvious, can be an inherited or long-subscribed belief system, a way of seeing the world and events, as just so.
The Tower makes it clear that’s not “just so.”
The Tower
The Tower
Out of the ashes of the The Lightning Struck Tower rises The Star.
