The Tower

Major Arcana XVI, The Tower shows a stone tower struck by lightning, its crown blown off, two figures falling headlong from the heights. Waite's Pictorial Key calls this the card of catastrophe, the destruction of the House of Doctrine built on false premises. The lightning bolt is divine intervention that cannot be negotiated with — it shatters what was thought permanent. In the Marseille tradition this card is called La Maison Dieu (the House of God), suggesting the edifice destroyed was sacred in pretension if not in substance. It follows The Devil in the trump sequence: first the recognition of bondage, then the violent liberation from it.