Jay Gidwitz's Posterous

 

The Tower (Tarot Card)

The_tower-copy

 

I'm working on a Tarot deck with my good friend Anthony

This card for the tarot deck wanted to be made, first apparently, even though we'd started other cards earlier and had planned to go in some semblance of the order of the cards.

The Tower (XVI) (most common modern name) is the sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most cartomancy Tarot decks.

Divination usage
Some frequent keywords used by card readers are:
  • Chaos ----- Sudden change ----- Impact ----- Hard times
  • Crisis ----- Revelation ----- Disruption ----- Realizing the truth
  • Disillusion ----- Crash ----- Burst ----- Uncomfortable experience
  • Downfall ----- Ruin ----- Ego blow ----- Explosive transformation
 
 Interpretation
 Many differing meanings are attributed to the card:
  • To some, it symbolizes failure, ruin and catastrophe.
  • To others, the Tower represents the paradigms constructed by the ego, the sum total of all schema that the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lightning when reality does not conform to expectation.
  • Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and Kundalini experiences[5] may result. In the Triple Goddess Tarot, the card is named "Kundalini Rising".
  • The Tower further symbolizes that moment in trance in which the mind actually changes the direction of the force of attention from alpha condition (pointed mindward) to theta condition (pointed imaginal stageward). A Theta condition (especially in waking versions of theta states) is that moment when information coming into the ego-mind overwhelms external or sensory stimuli, resulting in what might otherwise be called a "vision" or "hallucination."
  • Each card in the Major Arcana is a related to the previous ones. After the self bondage of The Devil, life is self correcting. Either the querents must make changes in their own lives, or the changes will be made for them.
  • The querent may be holding on to false ideas or pretenses; a new approach to thinking about the problem is needed. The querent is advised to think outside the box. The querent is warned that truth may not oblige schema. It may be time for the querent to re-examine belief structures, ideologies, and paradigms they hold to. The card may also point toward seeking education or higher knowledge.
  • Others believe that the Tower represents dualism, and the smashing of dualism into its component parts, in preparation for renewal that does not come from reified, entrenched concepts. The Ivory Tower as a parallel image comes to mind, with all its good parts and its bad parts.

 

Filed under: Digital Painting Jay Gidwitz Art Tarot Deck Tarot Deck Series The Tower digital art photo-manipulation photography
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