16-The Tower – Upright Rider Waite Deck

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Your Chosen Card – The Tower Upright Rider Waite Deck

When upright, the Tower suggests that you need to critically evaluate the structures that are confining you or limiting your life. If you don’t do so voluntarily, the universe will find a way to force change upon you. Longstanding routines that have been hindering your progress need to be abandoned. Unanticipated changes may at first appear traumatic but in the long run can open the door to renewal. There’s an old adage that says every crisis presents an opportunity. Unexpected and sometimes drastic alterations in one’s life course are often accompanied by sudden and profound insights into the nature of one’s reality and belief system. Concretely, such events may include separation, divorce, job loss, school failure, financial setbacks, an upsetting medical diagnosis, and so on.

Keywords Upright: A bolt from the blue, a sudden revelation, abrupt changes, unexpected news that seizes your attention, disruption, overthrow, upheaval, forced change, a call to action, unanticipated events, sudden enlightenment, liberation from limiting structures, purgation, an opportunity for new growth, purification, the need to act before it is too late.

Key XVI: The Tower
Myths/Archetypes: The Tower of Babel. Thor, the Norse god of lightning. Zeus of the thunderbolt. Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. Hades abducting Persephone.
Astrology: Mars, the god of wars, bloodshed, destruction. (Mars rules Aries and Scorpio)
Numerology: 7 (Chariot) = 1 + 6 (The Tower)

Rider Waite: Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe; (R) according to one account, the same in a lesser degree; also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.

When The Tower is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise.  If The Tower is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is The Tower is trying to tell you.  If you had a particular issue in  mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.

This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for The Tower using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.

Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books

Complete Book of Tarot
Book Details
Complete Book of Tarot: The Marseille deck consists of twenty-two trumps, forty pip cards, and sixteen court cards. The trumps are in the same arrangement as most modern decks with the exception of Justice (La Justice) falling in position VIII whereas Strength (La Force) falls in position XI. The Fool (Le Mat) is unnumbered. Today’s Magician, trump I, was called Le Bateleur (the Juggler, Mountebank, Showman, Buffoon). Trump II was La Papesse, the Female Pope, whereas trump V was Le Pape, the Pope of the Catholic Church. In addition, today’s Tower, trump XVI, was labeled Le Maison Dieu, the House of God. Finally, Trump XIII, the modern Death card, was without name and was referred to as L’Arcane sans nom (the unnamed trump).

Tarot Books

Creative Tarot: The Golden Dawn had probably the most influence on our contemporary understanding of the tarot. For this group of magicians and mystics, it was one tool of many in their magical system that pulled from sources like the Rosicrucians and the Kabbalah. One of the Golden Dawn’s founders, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, wrote the first guide to the tarot in England. The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling and Methods of Play, published in 1888, the same year the Golden Dawn came into existence, established tarot as a magical tool, and standardized the deck (or tried to—variations soon emerged) into the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles.

Complete Book of Tarot: Fact 3: The tarot is simply a tool that can help us to clarify our thinking. It’s up to us whether or not we use the cards. Some people find the tarot helpful, others do not. Occultist Hajo Banzhaf has cautioned that tarot is a good servant but a bad master. We should consult the tarot only if we find it helpful.

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Complete Book of Tarot: Fact 3: The tarot is simply a tool that can help us to clarify our thinking. It’s up to us whether or not we use the cards. Some people find the tarot helpful, others do not. Occultist Hajo Banzhaf has cautioned that tarot is a good servant but a bad master. We should consult the tarot only if we find it helpful.