The Tower Tarot Card Meaning and Art Court de Gebelin Trumps
Designation
About the Deck
Court de Gebelin Trumps
Drawn by Court de Gebelin in attempt to show that the Tarot was Egyptian in origin, these cards represent the height of circular logic. They are far more eighteenth-century than they are Egyptian, and in any case they are basically a reproduction of the far older Marseilles pattern tarot deck, with some ideological changes to help him prove his own point.
Provenance
Court de Gebelin. France, 1781.
Tags
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Tower struck by Lightning. 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. It is assuredly a card of confusion, and the design corresponds, broadly speaking, to any of the designations except Maison Dieu, unless we are to understand that the House of God has been abandoned and the veil of the temple rent. 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.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Ruin, Disruption, Over-throw, Loss, Bankruptcy
Reversed
These in a more or less partial degree.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Ruin. Deception.