The Tower

The Italian 'La Torre' means 'the tower'. The French 'La Maison Dieu' ('House of God') originally referred to a hospital or pilgrim hospice — and, by extension, a place of death. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century records show the card bore many names — 'the Arrow', 'the Fire', 'the Lightning', 'the Devil's House' — making it the most variously named trump.

The Charles VI deck, dating from the late fifteenth century, already shows a tower struck by celestial fire, with two figures falling from it, the flames issuing from where the sun should be — a clear image of divine punishment. The imagery draws on the tower-studded skyline of medieval Italian cities such as San Gimignano and Bologna, where families built ever-higher towers and attracted lightning.

Smith placed the tower on a cliff, struck by a bolt of lightning that hurls the golden crown from its top. Two figures tumble headlong, and twenty-two Yod-shaped flames scatter across the dark sky — one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, one for each trump. The destruction is total and sudden.

The lightning is the flash of revelation that destroys false structures; the falling crown, the collapse of worldly pride and illegitimate authority. The two figures are body and mind, or the false self, cast down by truth. The twenty-two flames are the divine name scattered through the ruins. The Tower is the necessary catastrophe that clears the ground for authentic life.

The Marseille tower is topped by a stream of flame that seems to peel it open rather than demolish it — a gentler 'forced opening'. Waite dramatized the destruction completely. In the Thoth deck Crowley attributes the card to Mars and depicts a serpent-mouthed eye breathing fire, with human forms dissolving below — the violent dispelling of illusion.

The card draws on the Tower of Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the apocalyptic hail of Revelation. The historical reality of Italian tower-houses and their lightning strikes gives the image a civic source as well. Astrologically it corresponds to Mars. As trump number 16 it is the most violent rupture of the sequence — the fall that must precede the starlight of the cards that follow.