Tarot Card Comparisons: The Thoth Tarot- key 16: THE TOWER & The Barbara Walker Tarot- key 16: THE TOWER/LA CASA de DIOS

The Tarot Tower represents: The Universal Principle of Renovation and Restoration.

 

"Enlightenment has its origin in the hidden sources of power which terrify the minds of the ignorant''[From the Path of Peh-Qabalistic Tarot-by Robert Wang]

 

This card is often misunderstood and seen as a doom and gloom, or a Armageddon end of an Aeon symbol. It's actually more about your own man-made personality, which is static and has crystallized thought to the point where you repeat the same thoughts and expect different results. There is insanity in such a process.

The Tower is a hallmark image of the Tower of Babel brought down by God the Destroyer (Hindu-Shiva and/or Christian-Lucifer ). In less archaic language, the personality de-constructed and reconstructed by enlighten thought.

 However, To look at this card, The Tower-key 16, of the Thoth Tarot or The Barbara Walker Tarot, is to look at war. When the eye of Shiva, the Destroyer opens, the universe disappears in a lightning flash, as does the dream of any awakened dreamer. Occult (hidden) knowledge states that all is but The Divine Creative Dreaming; when It awakes, the dream is over. In Hindu belief, this dreaming and awake cycle has happened three times before and now is the 4 manifestation of the Dream.

It is not too difficult to understand that an Unlimited Universal Collective Unconscious/conscious energy, when realizing itself as I AM, is creating limited concepts of itself, i.e. dreaming of "ME".

As in the human brain, dreaming is often solving problems, which can be then enacted in the awake state of consciousness and/or creation. This assimilation of and reordering of data is an annihilation of the dream, called awakening.  That is one meaning of this card, there are layers of understanding as yet to be examined, including medieval history.

In the medieval mind, the Tarot Tower, as depicted on the Barbara Walker Card, was known as the "House of God", or "lightning struck tower" and it's toppling was to mimic the predicted down fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Therefore, the traditional two falling figures, represented the Roman Emperor and the Pope, of the Roman Church.

The Thoth Tarot-Tower is attributed to the Hebrew letter Peh, meaning mouth (shown as the flame belching Mouth of Dis- the Roman God of the dead on the bottom of the card). We also have inherited the concept from our ancient forefathers, that a God Name spoken with Martian power, can be felt in the body and has a define effect on the human physical vehicle as well as an effect on the vehicles of psyche. Therefore The Tower also suggests that words of Power, spoken with Passion (Mars force), assist us in bringing about the destruction of our personal Towers of Babel; false concepts and institutions which we believe to be reality. The vibration of OM Mani Padmae Hum, is an example of a Yoga word of power. For that is what words are, vibrations, not reality but descriptions of reality.

Reality being in itself, relative and limited to the concepts of an individual, and therefore shadows of The Real Images they attempt to describe. Words are merely colored shadows, for in our world of reflection, the color of something, is a falsehood. A blue flower, isn't really blue, as it is well known in physics, that it absorbs every color of the electromagnetic light-spectrum but blue light. Hence, the color blue is reflected by the flower, thus the flower looks blue, but that is merely a veil of reflected light. This goes for everything that we called "colored" on this planet, including our wardrobe.

 

Then there is the "reality" that is  constructed as a dream of our self-consciousness, using the dedicated energy of our Life Frequencies or vibrations; many of us know these vibrations as Emotions.  Thoughts are vessels, and emotion, is the dedicated energy of "Will-To-Force", that gives the thought a vibration/frequency we call "reality". You may have noticed, that everybody's reality is  a "personal" belief system. These Realities, are the Dreams, the Real (Spirit), is on the other side of that Dream, i.e. the other side of The Mirror of Self Reflection which in Qabalah, is often called the Great Ocean of Mother Binah.

When much of our life force is dedicated to supporting our fantasies, we become less "Real", merely shadows of our Real Self, i.e. The Soul steps in with the Severity necessary to topple our Towering fantasies. This doesn't kill us, as that is not the purpose (although it can be a "near death" experience). The purpose of this severe measure is to accelerate the remembering of our Real Identity, which is the Divine Child of the Divine Creative, rather than a towering man made personal edifice of denial, mental enslavement, and pursuit of happiness. The Pursuit of Happiness, the great mantra of the U.S.A, is a paradigm of failure;  for, to seek (pursue), is to deny you have it! To pursue happiness is to deny you are happy being you, and therefore you must find a substitute "you". If you are not happily being you----its because you aren't being you----you are pursuing you instead! This works for the vision of consumerism, a greed based identity,  but not for your mental, emotional, and physical health.

 

I Am, is how you command your reality into being, for it is your inherited collective power over identity.  I AM Me, is how you exist as the "collective of ideas"! Me is and always will be a construct from the I Am . In Qabalah "I" is He  the idea and "Am" is She--the womb of understanding and the "Me" is the child born of understood idea.Your "I", is your  "all seeing eye", and your self-conscious is merely a collective of "I's" which are what your "eyes" see as a "world".

Because of indoctrination, some of our "Me's", self-conscious personality, become towering error of dysfunctional identity and since your functionality is Life (Spirit is Life), and as such, your purpose is in the "expansion and liberation of the Alive" ( As above, so Below), as Life, your self-awareness must support the living; if not, a "hidden (occult) source of power" will step in and topple your tower of Me. This is not for reasons of your permanent annihilation, but for the purpose of reconstructing definition by purifying the dysfunctional dedicated energy that is no longer moving in progressive states of evolution.

Somewhere, probably  from Christianity, we got the idea that spiritual development (bringing the Above mind to the Below mind) is all sweetness and light; this is false,  Enlightenment is a process of creation, destruction and recreation; a process of unburdening. As most of our ideas are "emotional burdens", often called "emotional baggage", based on the idea of survival, we are burden with limitations of fear. Hence, a phoenix rising from its own ashes (as depicted in the Phoenix Wand of the Adept) may set a romantic picture to some, however, ashes require a burning...sometimes a fierce fire of destruction of our fear based identity! That is why on the Tree of Life of the Hermetic Qabalah, you will see Severity (Geburah #5) and Mercy (Chesed-#4) connected by the Path of Teth (Strength)...because Tempering of a soft-unrefined- comfort seeking mind requires, hot fires of Passion, and Hard  Hammering of Knowledge (experience), and enough mercy not to destroy the entire creation. All of this, in order to forge the Proper strength in a Divine Creative-Self Personality. Therefore, tempering to forge ahead through the new territory of Self Awareness requires heated passion and the cooling waters of mercy! In other words, empathy comes from experiencing and recognizing error as pain, be it emotional or physical. Hence, empathy is something experiencing life as a "limited sensual form" can only give you.

It behooves us to remember, that as a dreaming Spirit----any fantasy will do but Life has ordered the Alive by cause and effect. Creation is the effect of ideas generated by the Universal Collective Unconscious-mind, i.e. Imagination and Reason. However, Spirit is Pure Will (Eheieh,"I Will Be") and has no empathy for idea, just like a Sociopath Scientist who experiences no empathy for his/her test subjects. Spiritual/willful ( "I Will Be") creativity must be linked to Sensual being, in order to know what thoughts enhance the Living and what thoughts don't. Love is created by this Union Of Invisible and sensual identity! Love, The Law of Attraction, is only understood by sensually experiencing " the Thoughts that we Love". Since Love, is a Powerful Will, on both sides of the mirror, what we willfully give our emotion to, is seen as "what we Love", and created for the individual who ordered it from the Universal I AM. As one can guess, what we think as Hate, a powerful emotional focus, is seen as "What we Love", and the Law of Attraction is invoked by the hater.

Therefore this  world is not about the Visions of the Ambitious, who enforce identity on others, for "the Greater Good" ( the "Greater God" of their vision) but rather the expansion and liberation of idea as The Living Presence of the Divine Creative. (I AM ME...is the Universal Mind's Vision). Therefore, in a world of "living" thought, sacrificing the alive for your visions, is dysfunctional. In the Living World,visions are to support the living  individuals. Beside historically recorded past efforts, human sacrifice to ideas, is no longer functional. Ideas, visions, are now to "enlighten" personal-life by raising it up out of the ashes of dysfunctional thoughts of self defeating definition. In our world, we often find that War is how we do this. 

Therefore,The Path of Peh, The Tower Tarot Card, is connecting Hod (Splendor) and Netzach (Victory), both of which are united in War. For example, it was the allowing the vision of Splendor that masked the bigotry of  Aryan purity; a peacock's vision of self importance, that had to be destroyed by the individuals who together threw down the Towering Nazi horror in the second world war. Death and Destruction was deemed a necessary severity for the victorious destruction of that false vision of separatist bigotry. For only after a battle, strife, and severity, are we to be Victors. That is another one of the messages of the Tower card; personal courage is required to become enlightened. This is severe, when the Towers of Falsehood, topple after all your hard work and denial, to make them stand. However, you must first identity the error (build it), correct it (tear it down) and then you must gather the rubble and rebuild. This is Experience, and this is how Knowledge is built into Wisdom. Hence Knowledge is built out of the rubble of failure, giving us the Wisdom to not repeat it. The Mercy of the Divine Creative allows you to survive personality destruction, so that the Real-you (the one not man made) can see error and correct it. We are Spirits whose Real Persona is a Soul (a collective of experienced identities)----personalities are the Towers we build!

Dr. Paul Foster Case calls the Path of Peh," The Exciting Intelligence", as vibrations excite matter and the Mouth sends forth vibrations as sound or words. Again: On the Tree of Life of the Hermetic Qabalah,

Hod ( Splendor), the center of the reasoning process is connected to the center of the intuition-desire nature, Netzach (Victory) by the Path of Peh-THE TOWER. This Path of the Personality brings into balance what is out of balance and is related to Mars, the Roman god of War and the North.

Traditionally the North was the quarter seen as the "greatest place of darkness", for when the Mysteries where initiated, the North side of King Solomon's temple was the darkest side. But all is not doom and gloom here, as any initiate in the Mysteries knows, it is from the darkest night that comes Light and as Robert Wang stated:  "enlightenment has its origin in the hidden sources of power which terrify the minds of the ignorant".

To us moderns who are familiar with Quantum Physics Theory, it is said that from the Dark Energy and Dark Matter are the birth places of visible Light electromagnetic spectrum.

Peh, the Hebrew letter meaning Mouth, is called a double letter, for it not only means -Mouth but also-Grace/Indignation, a union of opposites.  Double letters, are considered "gateways of the Soul", that have two possible directions of passage. It is also a fact that the mouth has two passages as well. One passage takes in nourishment into the organic system and another expresses speech.  Thus, we can see the similarity between the two actions of the Path of Peh, for it not only is a devastating Path of the Higher Vibrations that burn away the dross of our material bound Personalities, it is also the entrance that nourishes the consciousness with the Spiritual knowledge,( enlightenment) from the Real Persona of the Psyche.

Many of us are familiar with chanting and the effects of the  power of  vitiation on the physical body. Many Mysteries underexpose on the use of "god names" or "Words of Power" to effect the destruction of "negative energies" , in body and environment.  (Relative to speech, we know that the Logos, is also called the Word,)  These "negative energies" are really "negative emotional self-perspectives", that The Tower card represents the destruction of, and/or are our own personal towers of false concepts and institutions that are commonly believed to be reality. By tearing down, room is made for something new directly from the Soul (your sole reason to be).

Now I know that Mars is the symbol of the Roman war god of destruction but few remember that Mars is also attributed with the power of  crop fertility. Again the process of destruction to build anew is seen here as the peace and calm of the soil is distributed in order to plant healthy crops.  This really is the core of the message of The Tower-Key 16. Therefore, the tower represents a phallic element as well. Which is also the message of Barbara Walker's Tower card.

Before we get all "flesh-0-phobic"; members of Renaissance fraternities, such as Freemason's, dearly loved, and needed hidden signals and occult messages that were "hidden in plain sight", since in a theocracy, "wrong beliefs" meant torture and death. Therefore, to symbolize the Heavenly Father of the Ancient world, which used both lightning and the tower as age-old representations of the Phallic fertility of the Divine Creative, the medieval designer's of Tarot combined the ancient symbols. This was also because, the ancient Heavenly Father, the Trident barer (symbolizing his ability to fertilize the Three States of the Divine Feminine,i.e. Maid, Mother and Crone) was revised by the Roman Church as the image of Lucifer. Therefore, Zeus, Neptune, Pluto, Jupiter, Hades, Poseidon, and many other classic god depictions who all bore the trident, became Christianities, Devil.

In the Thoth Deck version of THE TOWER, we see stylized lightning or energy strikes knocking off the geometric shapes of  human forms which symbolize the crystallized man-made personalities that see reality as a  world of straight lines; straight lines as in "black and White" or "good and bad". The Man-Made personality, sees a reality foreign to Nature and the Universe, which are circular and/or spiral in nature, and is known for its lack of straight lines. In the Spiral Universe of the Divine Creative, "it exists because it is supposed to".

The Tower symbolizes the construct that most people call "I" or "me", being shattered by the influx of the Fiery High Self  of "I AM". Therefore, The Tower is a symbolic as a place of destruction that is being remade in the individual consciousness for higher Knowledge. The toppling Tower also represents the destruction of  man made institutions, government, religions, or any accepted values.

Yet this striking down, is not to be construed as the destruction of evil, rather it is a process of change, as "stepping stones" of perspective are built that contributes to the continual building up and striking down of concepts that lead into the Inner Realms of Higher Self; Kind of like the building up and striking down of miles as one travels. The concept of evil is absolutely dysfunctional, since it is live spelled backwards, which can be used by the Divine Creative, to push life "forward". Evil is always errantly linked with death, a process of evolutionary self advancement and soul transformation. Despite the Spiritual vision of "everlasting life", the survival mind as revised this to mean "everlasting alive", and would destroy anything, to be  "alive forever". If we can't see how dysfunctional this is, we are definitely ignorant of the Collective of Identity that Life builds as the alive.

Another way to understand THE TOWER'S  process, is that upon first approach to these "Higher Planes/frequencies " of subjective reality, many people anthropomorphize the States of Conscious Energy, as Archangels or "Spiritual Beings", as that is how they "realize" them; However, these Creative Forces are formless, subjective, so in order to incorporate these forces into our own anthropomorphized "reality", we must destroy the previous false concepts of these angelic beings as separates and know them as states of  I Am Me; states of Master and Masterpiece in balanced union.This is a necessary process of progressive and expanding Self-Awareness as we journey on the "Above all things, know thyself" Paths of the Tree of Life. After all, just to travel in the present, we must destroy the perspectives of our past!

The Higher Self, is our True Ego which is not ours alone, but of the Soul Collective, so The Tower's solitary destruct also represents the eradication of the false ego; the one made by the survival consciousness of the animal body, i.e., the "fear of discomfort" based reality of survival thinking. As a Psyche, we are the Trans-formative force of our identity and bodies. Organic Soma, is transformed into Human bodies, becoming psychosomatic, an experiment of the Psyche in the Material that gives it the "Power of Limitation" and then, after the experiment proves or disproves itself, is returned to the Original Body it was transformed from--Living Earth!

The lightning flashes, seen on the Tower Tarot card, are representative of sudden inspiration, or flashes of perception, that occur when we realize our Real Identities. This inner conflict is  why A.Crowley subtitled THE TOWER as WAR. But this is not a new perspective on the inner conflict of survival persona and the Higher Self, as throughout esoteric literature are depicted these moments of "inner-war". For instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, there is described symbolic battle of self perspectives, and/or component parts of Self: The Higher Genius is portrayed as Krishna (Solar Logos), guiding Arjuna (lower personality) onto his inner, and personal field of conflict. In Sumero-Babylonian mythos, we have the War between Chaos and Order represented as the Chaos Dragon Tiamat being overcome by Marduk (god of war).

In Western literature, we have Christ, going through his days in the desert, solitary and alone, while being continually tempted by the lower personality of  Satan, which relates to the survival based ego trying to usurp the Rule of the True Ego.

Therefore, in the outer world and inner world, the Tower Tarot card is about the destruction of the old order.

In the Thoth Deck Tower card, the all seeing eye (I) observes and directs the destruction of the Tower, representing the old order, while Dis, the Roman god of  the dead, belches flames against the tower base. The path of the Tower, is often considered to be an affirmation of the Primal Will that it alone is the True Crown that brings into balance the pure positive or male-Chokma and the pure negative or female-Binah. Neither of which are man-made definitions of value, but dual functions of the Immortal Self and therefore often flee the understanding of the pursuing reason of mortality.

On one side of the Thoth Tarot Tower card is the dove, representing one of the two forms of desire,"The will to die"; on the other side of the card, is the Sacred Serpent, which represents the other form of desire, "The Will to Live". These are ancient symbols of Life and death, as the serpent sheds its skin, as a kind of resurrection and the dove flies towards the heavens as a "Holy Spirit".

The Dove is also considered to be a  Feminine symbol of Venus and the Serpent a Masculine one, as She is balanced peace of magnetism and he is the serpentine-lightning-electric force that is the "motion in all movement" and which the magnetic womb contains to make Force into Form.

So once again, there are obvious sexual connotations to this card, in the past, these were broadly suggested so that "polite society" would not be offended. However, "God is Sex", the Tower itself is a phallic symbol, the Mouth, is the opening of the male reproductive male organ from which the Yod (seed of life), ejaculates.

In Crowley's 1923 diary, he states that,"...the Blasted Tower which is really a Phallus shooting forth lightnings of seed".  As the Alchemist and modern chemist know, the forced transmutation of energy from one form to another is done by Fire's excitable and  destructive nature. This initial activation of transformation ultimately leads to fruition as energy is released to be restructured into another form. 

As a practicing Tantric and Qabalist, I know the Physical Male body is a type of capacitor of Positive electric force and the Physical Female body is a crucible (womb) of Negative Magnetic Energy (female Shakti), that captures the electric discharge of the Solar Logos (Male-Shiva), eventually producing active form. As in Tantra, Qabalah understands that the Tree of All Life, is a balancing of opposites; a balancing of Force and Form.

In the Tower card, the Mars force is presented as the sexual energy of the Microcosm ( Microprosopus), and  the image of the Tower is in some ways the phallus; all of which points to the all important understanding that, it is the Higher Sexual Energy  that at first is One-Kether than becomes two and flows from Chokma to Binah, in the Upper Trinity of Kether, Chokma, Binah that is called the Supernal Triangle and/or the Archetypal world of Aziluth.

There is a kind of destruction of the male sex organ itself in orgasm which relates to the destruction of the Singularity in the "Big Bang" (no pun intended) so that seeds of Identity may spread! The Hebrew letter Yod, meaning hand or "Seeds of Spiritual fire", are representatives of active force, being manipulated by Imagination (the Divine Feminine) instilling self-idea into a material, be it "thought", the first material, or the latest material of Organic matter.

There is then an interpretation here, that the fall from the Tower, enables  the sacrifice of one's perception of the sexual function, is continually required by human kind, in order to maintain the given Path by which one may return to the Source of All. However, the Path is initiatory as it prepares us for the Knowledge and Conversion of the Solar Logos of Tiphareth, the Real Person. What should be noted here, is that when you "ejaculate" electric energy into the magnetic crucible, you get electromagnetic energy; a place where the,"... male the male and the female one and the same..." ...a partial quote from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

 

Here's the whole quote, when asked by the disciples when they shall enter the Kingdom of God (The Supernal Triangle), : (22) "Jesus said to them,' When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then you will enter the Kingdom."

This quote completely explains the Qabalistic Tree of Life and will require in depth study, skying of the Tower card, and Self Knowledge to understand, However, I'll give you some clues, "eyes into an eye" refers to changing perspective of the reality of sight, from the separatism of eyes, to the All seeing eye (I)......the turning of a hand into a hand refers to the Hebrew word Yod--meaning Hand and also called the Seed of Spirit. The male/female transformation has already been explained, as the masculine "Will to Force" and the Feminine "Will to Form" .  It should be noted that the Higher Mysteries are sexual, but in perspectives far beyond the libido of  hormone besotted  bodies.

The Path of Peh, The Tower, may be symbolically phallic, but this does not make it a "male only Path" as this Path exists prior to the differentiation of the sexes necessary for multiple and diverse incarnation. This Tower path is an amalgamation of both male electric "will to force" and female magnetic "will to form". However, on the path of Peh, one must focus on the male electric force, sexual force, that resides in all of us, as on other paths one must deal with female components.  Only in working in groups  are the different polarities of the physical male and female bodies considered as they both experience the Path differently, according to their polarities.

As in most Thoth Tarot cards of the Major Arcana, The Tower Card-key 16, has many layers of meaning.

We have:

The many symbols on the avant-garde art of the Thoth card represent all of these meanings. We have the All Seeing eye of the Awake Shiva, the Haloed Serpent Force, the Lion-Serpent Abraxas, the Dove of Peace that is the Holy Spirit (also the Venus influence) and the crystalline humanoid shapes of the falling figures, who because of their indoctrination have become indistinct geometrical expressions that are unrecognizable as individuals.

The Lion-Serpent Abraxas (or Xnoubis) and the Dove of Peace, represent two forms of Desire" The Will to live and the Will to die.,

There is yet another layer in meaning here, as the former is the Feminine and the latter is the masculine impulses. Some may see these two as in contradiction, but in all actuality,  "the will to live" and the "Will to die" are the inseparable "Wife and Husband" of all creation. Life and death are a single manifestation, Life/Death, of all Energy. It behooves us to remember, that no matter how great the creation, it is going to"proceed from order to disorder" (second law of thermodynamics). Entropy happens to energy, when it is made to 'manifest" as form. Form is a Ruled and Controlled environment that causes a Static motion within parameters. Whereas, eternal motion, requires this stasis to degrade back into motive energy as a Universal dynamic. Energy transformation requires transformation of transformations, in order to constantly transform. Hence the term,"life eats itself to stay alive" and the Soul, The Real Person, makes persona's of it's Self Awareness, i.e. Imagination creates self-images that it consumes in its collective, in order to build more expansive Identities of Self. Hence, Self, is all one will ever see!

The Hebrew letter Peh-means Mouth, which also links this Thoth Deck tarot card to the Tower of Babble of Biblical lore. It defines the difference between the Word of God and the languages of mankind. The Word of God is the Logos, or a foundation vibration of energy that is the Root of all Creation. Unless spoken with the Power of Mars (willful force), mankind's words are merely definitions of what has already been created and but shadows of Truth.

The Planetary frequency associated with the Tower Card is Mars, a driving force that connects the center of Reasoning (Hod) with the center of intuitive- desire nature (Netzach). Peh, is the balancing path of the Personality that equalizes reason and desire. Peh is also a double letter meaning that it has two possible directions of passage; the mouth is an orifice that takes in nourishment to the system as well as expresses words.  Through breath and even a more powerful breathing- Pranic Breathing, (yoga breath),the higher energies of Spirit can enter the human system and by the power of chanting (vibration control) these subtle energies can aid in creation. Thus the term of the Mars speak of the Magician was developed to imply the power of willful intonation.

The Tower itself is the literal world of human language that blocks expansive thinking and which must be toppled in order to evolve the personality. This Spiritual growth in understanding and perspective is not always fun, in fact it can be devastatingly unpleasant. The more we are walled in by the "brick and mortar" of our thoughts, the more force is needed to topple our errant understandings of Self.

With a great blast of lightning (Fiery Will of Spirit) our personal self conceptions (survival based definitions) are brought down, so that we can see the True Ego (Whole Self) who manifests "selves". We wouldn't be able to "Know Ourselves" when our identities are walled up in a Tower of Language, for that is merely a splendorous veil. So this card is a deliverance but in a necessarily harsh way as our own personal "I" [our Towers of identity] are limited by man made institutions, and false concepts which we believe to be reality.

The Barbara Walker Tarot-key 16-The Tower, also illustrates the old medieval paradox of God's lightning being used to destroy his own churches. In 1783, Bishops complained that over the previous 30 yrs, the Devil's lightning had damaged over 400 churches, killing 120 bell ringers, all in Germany alone. The proclaimed "infallible" preventatives: bell ringing, prayers, sprinkling of holy water, vigils and processions around churches in rain storms, did not help in anyway. This was theologically embarrassing as no Church authority could explain why god was unable to protect the Church from Lucifer's lightning. Among heretics, it was whispered that the churches belonged to a false god, on who god's true wrath must fall.

This whispering caught on for to this day, damage by lightning is legally styled  "an act of god". Lucky for church goer's, the arch-infidel Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, even though the static mind of the Church authorities resisted the "ungodly" solution of the lightning rod for a time, it is now part of all churches, modern construction and most homes.

The Higher Self, or Real Person is the original "I" of our Soul, as shown in this card as the "All seeing Eye", is the Real Ego, who will step in and bring down our world of self deception build by our reality-egos, whether in the destruction of man made institutions (War) or man-made definitions. Hence, The Tower is a card of Transformation, brought about by destroying the old to build the new.

Initiates in to the Mysteries of Gnostic Qaballah, spend up to a year meditating on this card and it can be a very "hard year' indeed! It is a kind of self immolation, in order to consume the lower personality and rise up on the smoke of its destruction -- phoenix like into Higher Self realization. This may deter the weak of heart but this Path is necessary to develop the Hard Desire that is a driving force behind our Divine inheritance.

The Tower, may seem all doom and gloom, but in reality, our Soul is merely bringing us out of slavery to the definitions of self depredation (the Child of Man) and back into the Original Identity of our Creation, The Child of God. "A tower moment" may cause some internal turmoil, but it won't be long-lived.

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