The Shadow Series Tarot Card Comparison. Thoth Tarot key16-The Tower & The Shadow Tarot- Path-27-Parfaxitas

This card is often misunderstood and seen as a doom and gloom Armageddon end of an Aeon symbol. It's 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 (Shiva).

In less archaic language, the Tower represents the personality "de-constructed" and reconstructed by enlighten thought.

The fire breathing dragon at the base, in a mundane explanation, is the Spiritual and/or Life force that transforms life constantly in order to keep evolving the living.

The four figures falling out of the tower symbolize the crystallized thought of the "wanna-be", i.e. yesterdays' culturally-thought formed people who seek only comfort and fear change. These are thoughts that hold us back from our impeccable performance in life motion as evolutionary Life is all about performance rather than conformance. Essential Self is progressive thought; not enslaved thought.

The open eye at the top represents the Eye of Horus, the Egyptian god of perception; the perceptive state of awakening and seeing the deeper/inner authentic self that is not human defined but is God made.

Awakening people, in order to become "enlightened", are required to come into alignment with the Greater Self, which is often symbolized by the Oriental fire breathing dragon. We are Dragons! ( the union of Angel, animal and daemon---i.e. "those who are not bound by laws but expand and liberate laws from states of stasis by transubstantiation).

The haloed serpent, reminds us that by shedding old ways of thinking we become expanded and liberated and is also the Divine Kundalini symbol. Expanded consciousness requires expanded definitions of self.

The dove represents the inner peace that we have when we become the authentic Divine Creative self image

which comes from shedding the outer definition of man-made being.

The Qabalistic Thoth Tower Card-Key 16, is the Path of Peh, meaning Mouth. Paul Foster Case calls the 27th Path of Peh," The Exciting Intelligence", as vibrations excite matter and the Mouth sends forth vibrations as sound or words.

Hod, Sephira 8 ( Splendor), the center of the reasoning process is connected to the center of the intuition-desire nature, Netzach Sephira 7 (Victory) by the Path of Peh-THE TOWER.  Therefore the flow of 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, and is presented as a tower image in The Shadow Tarot-27- Parfaxitas.

But all is not doom and gloom here, as any initiate in the Mysteries knows, it is from the darkest night (therefore the Shadow Tarot) that comes Light and that "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 Light energy.

Peh, the Hebrew word, 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 we 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 Personalities, it is also the entrance that nourishes the consciousness with the Spiritual knowledge,( enlightenment) from the Real Person.

Many of us are familiar with chanting and the effects of the  power of  vitiation on the physical body. Many Mysteries rituals rely 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" that The Tower card represents  the destruction of, 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.

Now I know that Mars is the symbol of the war god of destruction but few remember that Mars is also attributed with the power of  crop fertility, much like the Native American god of fertility-Kokopelli (seen playing flute).

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.

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 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. Nature and the Universe aren't linear but rather circular and/or spiral in nature. Therefore the Tower symbolizes the construct that most people call "I" or Self, were perspectives of the Personality are being shattered by the influx of the Fiery  High Self- Knowledge in order to make space in personal   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. Another way to understand THE TOWER'S  process, is that upon first approach to these 'Higher Planes" of 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, so in order to incorporate these forces into our own anthropomorphized "reality", we must destroy the previous false concepts of these angelic beings and know them as states of  I Am Me and/or SELF. 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. In our world of time/space, 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 that of the Divine Collective Unconscious, so the Tower's solitary destruction also represents the eradication of the false ego made by the survival consciousness of the animal body.

The lightning flashes 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 ( White-Solar Logos), guiding Arjuna (lower  dark-personality) onto his inner, and personal field of conflict.

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.

But let us not forget that to look at this card, The Tower-key 16, is to look at war. When the eye of Shiva , the Destroyer opens, the universe disappears, as does the dream of the awakened dreamer. Occult (hidden) knowledge states that all is but God 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 really is not too difficult to understand that an unlimited conscious energy, when realizing itself, is creating limited concepts of itself, i.e. dreaming. 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. 

The 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 have often heard 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. The Tower 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.

 Reality 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-Be", that gives the thought a vibrational 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. 

All of this self-reflecting is very entertaining to the mind; however when too much of our life force is dedicated to supporting our fantasies, we become less "Real" and The Soul, steps in with the severity necessary to topple our Towering fantasies. This "Tower Moment" doesn't kill us, as that is not the purpose (although it can be a "near death" experience). Rather the purpose of this severe measure is for the action of remembering our Real Identity, which is the Divine Child of God, rather than a towering man made personal edifice of denial, mental enslavement, and pursuit of happiness. (To seek or pursue, is to deny you are or have it). To pursue happiness is to deny you are happy being you. If you are not happily being you----its because you aren't being you----you are pursuing you instead! This constant pursuit of identity works for the vision of consumerism, but not for your mental, emotional, and physical health.

 I Am, is how you command your reality into being.  I AM Me, is how you exist as the idea! 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.

Because of constant interference some of our "Me's" become towering error of dysfunctional identity, babel, and since your functionality is in the "expansion and liberation of the Alive" ( As above, so Below), your self-awareness must support the living; if not, a "hidden (occult) source of power" will step in and topple your tower of Babbling 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 Theology, 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 phoenix rising from its own ashes may set a romantic picture to some, however, ashes require a burning...sometimes a fierce fire of destruction!

That is why on the Qabalistic Tree of Life you will see Severity (Geburah #5) and Mercy (Chesed-#4) connected by the Path of Teth (Strength),because Tempering of a soft-unrefined- mind requires, hot fires of Passion, and hard  hammering of Knowledge (experience), and enough mercy not to destroy the creation, in order to forge the Proper strength in a Divine Creative-God- 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; empathy is something experiencing life as a "limited sensual form" can only give you.

Remember, As a dreaming Spirit, any fantasy will do, but Life is ordered  by cause and effect. Creation is the effect of ideas generated by the God-mind, i.e. Imagination and Spirit is Pure Will that has no empathy, just like a Sociopath Scientist who experiences no empathy for his/her test subjects. Spiritual/willful 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 is only fully understood by sensually experiencing what is "not love" and what enhances the Life of Being!

Therefore this  world is not about the Visions of the Ambitious, often touted as being for "the Greater Good" (Greater God) but rather the expansion and liberation of idea as The Living Presence. (I AM ME...is the Universal Mind's Vision.). In the Living World, visions are to support  the living  individuals and human sacrifice to ideas, is no longer functional. Therefore, sacrificing the alive for your visions, is dysfunctional. Ideas, visions, are now to "enlighten" personal-life by raising it up out of the ashes of dysfunctional thought/definition. In our world, we often find that War is how we "rise up" out of dysfunctional leadership. Thus, you will see, that the Path of Peh, is connecting Hod (Splendor) and Netzach (Victory). For example, it was the allowing the vision of Splendor that masked the bigotry of  Aryan purity, a peacocks 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 abolishment of that false vision of bigotry. For only after a battle, strife, and severity, are we to be Victors. Therefore there is yet another message of the Tower card; personal courage is required to become enlightened.

When the Towers of Falsehood, topple after all your hard work to make them stand, you must first identity the error, correct it and then you must gather the rubble and rebuild. This is Experience, and this is how Knowledge is built. Knowledge is built out of the rubble of failure. The Mercy of God allows you to survive personality destruction, so that you can see error and correct it...personally. We are Spirits----personalities are the Towers we build!

The Shadow Tarot- Path 27, Parfaxitas depicts the breaking of the bonds of consensus reality. The connecting of psyche and Soma [

soma VariationHoughton Mifflin

human kind's higher self of which mankind shall evolve into. 

Thus Linda has filled the card with abstract atavisms of future selves.

The Goddess as night black Saturn, adorned with images of cats howling and owls, all symbols of death.  Therefore we have yet another tunnel of Love/Death, (Eros/Thanatos) decorated with a rendition of a Aztec altar adorned with skulls of alien beings, "not unlike ourselves". All of this, rich in symbol, just suggests the destruction of old ego, to build anew ego and bringing on the Horus or the "22 century human consciousness".

The abilities purportedly received from successful entry and return from the Tunnel of Parfaxitas are:

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