MAJOR ARCANA CARD TOWER XVI

THE TOWER
Basic Card Symbols
A tower on a rocky outcrop, a powerful bolt of lightning, one or two figures falling from the tower, sometimes waves crashing below.
Basic Tarot Story
As the Fool leaves the throne of the Goat God, he comes upon a Tower, fantastic, magnificent, and familiar. In fact, The Fool, himself, helped build this Tower back when the most important thing to him was making his mark on the world and proving himself better than other men. Inside the Tower, at the top, arrogant men still live, convinced of their rightness. Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey. But he realizes now that he hasn't. He's been seeing himself, like the Tower, like the men inside, as alone and singular and superior, when in fact, he is no such thing. So captured is he by the shock of this insight, that he opens his mouth and releases a SHOUT! And to his astonishment and terror, as if the shout has taken form, a bolt of actual lightning slashes down from the heavens, striking the Tower and sending its residents leaping out into the waters below.
In a moment, it is over. The Tower is rubble, only rocks remaining. Stunned and shaken to the core, the Fool experiences grief, profound fear and disbelief. But also, a strange clarity of vision, as if his inner eye has finally opened. He tore down his resistance to change and sacrifice (Hanged man), then broke free of his fear and preconceptions of death (Death); he dissolved his belief that opposites cannot be merged (Temperance) and shattered the chains of ambition and desire (The Devil). But here and now, he has done what was hardest: destroyed the lies he held about himself. What's left is the bare, absolute truth. On this he can rebuild his soul.


Basic Tarot Meaning
With Mars as its ruling planet, the Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The Tower, as Wang points out, stands for "false concepts and institutions that we take for real." When the Querent gets this card, they can expect to be shaken up, to be blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.

TOWER: Ruled by the planet of Mars, conflict. Destruction,

it is also a card of violent change.

Mars () is the ruling planet of Aries and, for many astrologers, Scorpio. Mars was the Roman god of war and bloodshed, whose symbol was a spear and shield (from which its glyph is derived). Both the soil of Mars and the hemoglobin of our blood are rich in iron, and because of this they share its distinct deep red color.[5] Mars orbits the sun in 687 days, spending about 57.25 days in each sign of the zodiac. It is also the first planet that orbits outside of Earth's orbit making it the first planet that doesn't set along with the sun.
Astrologically Mars is associated with confidence and self assertion, aggression, sexuality, energy, strength, ambition, and impulsiveness. Mars governs sports, competitions and physical activities in general. The first-century poet Manilius, described the planet Mars as ardent, and as the lesser malefic. In medicine Mars presides over the genitals, the muscular system, the gonads and adrenal glands; it was held to be hot and excessively dry, and ruled the choleric humour. It was associated with fever, accidents, trauma, pain and surgery. In modern astrology, Mars is said to rule the 1st and 8th houses; traditionally, however, Mars ruled the 3rd and 10th houses and was said to 'joy' in the 6th house of servants, chores and ill-health (all of these houses are associated with labour and energy expenditure: 3rd - schoolchild, 10th - worker, 6th - servant).
Before the discovery of Pluto, it was universally considered the ruler of Scorpio. Most modern astrologers consider Pluto the ruler of Scorpio, but many regard Mars as a co-ruler, while all traditional astrologers still regard Mars as the only ruler of Scorpio.
Mars is associated with Tuesday, and in Romance languages the word for Tuesday often resembles Mars (in Spanish, martes and in French, mardi). Dante Alighieri associated Mars with the liberal art of arithmetic.
In Chinese astrology, Mars is ruled by the element fire, which is passionate, energetic and adventurous. In Indian astrology, Mars is called Mangala and represents energy, confidence and ego.

taken from wiki.

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