"Occult explanations attached to this card are meager and mostly
disconcerting. It is idle to indicate that it depicts ruin in all its
aspects, because it bears this evidence on the surface. It is said further
that it contains the first allusion to a material building, but I do not
conceive that the Tower is more or less material than the pillars which we
have met with in three previous cases. I see nothing to warrant Papus in
supposing that it is literally the fall of Adam, but there is more in favour
of his alternative-- that it signifies the materialization of the spiritual
word. The bibliographer Christian imagines that it is the downfall of the
mind, seeking to penetrate the mystery of God. I agree rather with Grand
Orient that it is the ruin of the House of Life, when evil has prevailed
therein, and above all that it is the rending of a House of Doctrine. I
understand that the reference is, however, to a House of Falsehood. It
illustrates also in the most comprehensive way the old truth that "Except the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."
There is a sense in which the catastrophe is a reflection from the previous
card, but not on the side of the symbolism which I have tried to indicate
therein. It is more correctly a question of nalaogy: one is concerned with
the fall into the material and animal state, while the other signifies
destruction on the intellectual side. The Tower has been spoken of as the
chastisement of pride and the intellect overwhelmed in the attempt to
penetrate the Mystery of God; but in neither case do these explanations
account for the two persons who are the living sufferers. The one is the
literal word made void and the other its false interpretation. In yet a
deeper sense, it may signify also the end of a dispensation, but there is no
possibility here for the consideration of this involved question." A.E. Waite
