The Tower (XVI)
Fire as the central motif, with the Crown in a secondary part. From The 1909 tarot.
What is happening
Waite, 1911 “I agree rather with Grand Orient that it is the ruin of the House of Life, when evil has prevailed therein, and above all that it is the rending of a House of Doctrine. I understand that the reference is, however, to a House of Falsehood.”
Waite, 1911 “Its alternative titles are: Castle of Plutus, God's House and the Tower of Babel. In the last case, the figures falling therefrom are held to be Nimrod and his minister.”
Key · 2 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 1
The picture
A tower on a crag struck by lightning, its crown knocked from the top, flames at the windows, two figures falling head first, drops of fire in a black sky; Fire as the central motif, the Crown by eye. By eye
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The composition, the picture read whole in our own words, comes with the entry.
No entry yet for this motif. The wall gathers every work that carries it.
By eye The central motif, the lightning, and the flames at the top and the windows.
Waite, 1911 “It is a little surprising that the device has not so far been allocated to the destruction of Solomon's Temple, when the lightning would symbolize the fire and sword with which that edifice was visited by the King of the Chaldees.”
Waite, 1911 “It is idle to indicate that it depicts ruin in all its aspects, because it bears this evidence on the surface.”
Completion, and in the Kabbalistic reading the first sephirah, the point at which the work is no longer yours.
By eye A secondary motif, struck from the top of the tower.
Symbolica The crown knocked from the top of the tower is on the card and not in Waite's text, which names neither it nor the falling figures. Marked as observed on the card, and left unread rather than guessed.
Also carrying Fire
5 works, 3 with it as the central motif. The symbol.
Also carrying the Crown
10 works. The symbol.
In the same series
Record
One symbol a week, decoded.
This picture is free at full size from its source, linked above. What an address gets is the Sunday letter: one picture, one symbol marked on it, what it meant and who said so, and the master files of the decoded plates as they are verified. Leave any time.
Free, one letter a week, unsubscribe in one click. How the address is used.
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to move · double-tap for 1:1 · 809 by 1400 pixel web copy; the source file is linked under Record