TEMPLE artefact #012
#16 The Tower final version
#16 THE TOWER
KEY WORDS –- SELF-KNOWLEDGE, UNDOING OF RESTRICTION, RUIN, RENEWAL
The TOWER is Trump 16 of the Major Arcana.
Traditionally, the Tower shows a stone crenellated tower on a crumbling island of rock. The tower is struck by divine lightning or flame while the chaotic sea rises to undermine its foundations all around.
The Tower represents every human venture, dream or aspiration brought to nothing by some combination of hubris and the blind forces of the universe.
It is the Tower of Babel humankind in its Pride made to reach heaven, only for it to be cast down by God and the hope of a united people with one language was brought to rubble.
It is the restricting ego razed to its foundations, so that something new can develop.
It is also a picture of the devastating effects of War, and its dedicated planet is MARS.
Our version incorporates some ideas derived from Crowley’s Aeonic system, as strained through Kenneth Grant and adapted by the author.
For this reason, unlike other depictions, our tower is a PYRAMID – its capstone has an EYE, like the one on the dollar bill. This eye rolls up, delirious in disaster as lightning bolts crackle down to shatter its secure foundations, to undermine its cherished systems and beliefs.
This is the Pyramid of the Illuminati, of the Patriarchy, of competition, master image of the Father Aeon of Osiris, the Dying and Resurrected God of the Word.
Descending from the bruised and roiling turbulence of storm clouds at the top of the card we can see the lower 3/4s of the planet MARS – ideally as astronomically accurate a version as will fit here.
Mars also has an eye – the destroying eye of Egyptian HORUS and Hindu SIVA, glaring downwards and surrounded by lightning – of which two bolts arc down in a pincer movement to strike the pyramid eye.
Lightning cracks down from the clouds to attack the pyramid – all the lines of force directed down from the cosmic storm to the suddenly fragile structure.
From the Martian globe FIVE project cartoonish CANNONS like spikes on the shell of a chestnut – from the business ends of the cannons shoot little pop art comic book-y blasts of jagged graphic colour and line.
In Crowley’s metaphorical system of Aeons, the Aeon of Horus, the Son, Lord of Force and Fire naturally follows the last 2000 years of Osiris the Father. It is in the nature of Horus, the wild young rock star messiah, the Chosen One Boy King, to tear down the structures of Law and Reason his father has built – where Horus spreads his wings wars ensue; culture wars, territorial wars, ontological wars.
Attending Horus, however, awaiting her moment is his sister, Ma’at, the Daughter of Truth, Harmony and Balance – only she can rebuild the meaning of the world after Horus’ rampage.
We will see her again in more benign guise but here we see Ma’at in her destructive form – as a great starry PANTHER coming in at a defiant ANGLE to the left of the tower, a silhouette made of stars and nebulaic matter with slit eyes, flattened ears, jaws agape, all fangs, and giant starry claws gripping the shattering pyramid on either side as if to assist in tearing it apart.
The pyramid is BREAKING under the strain of these assaults as Brother and Sister dismantle the frozen, mummified and far from healthy world of the Father. The capstone sliding away at the top, wracked by lightning strikes, is toppling off to the RIGHT.
At the bottom of the pyramid where it sits on its outcrop of rock in the ocean of chaos, is a shallow alcove and a door – broken so that the jagged fragments at top and bottom recall a screaming mouth with broken teeth. On either side of the entrance are two PILLARS – these pylons are the familiar shape of the WTC towers. And the ‘11’ they form is the traditional number of the Abyss.
The pyramid base too seems to collapse and disintegrate, causing higher tiers of stones to collapse and shatter, crumpling down on the level below, fusing and compressing the huge stone cubes. Crumbling, cracking. Light and lightning breaks out of ever fissure.
Leading into the ocean from the door and pillars are crumbling stairs.
From the bottom of the card an ocean of chaos surges up in fierce waves. Jagged rocks gnash from the surging, stylized waves, like misshapen teeth gnawing away the foundations, while raging waters erupt and seethe between them.
The rocky outcrop on which the pyramid stands in the sea of chaos, is dissolving to sand. Entropy tears down all towers and monuments.
A total destruction. The fall of certainties, cancelling of imagined futures, the fate of all material things.
But like the removal and replacement of an old and precarious rotting structure, the potential for renewal is always implied in this card.
Comin’ Down Fast, but He’s MILES above Ya --
Hell for Leather!
Healther-Skelter
Always is Always Forever
Is 1 is 1 is One --
How Do You Fight Such a Savage...?
Hm. With Heart, Faith, and Steel;
In The End -- There can BE only One.
https://auguries.substack.com/p/monday-14th-november-1553