Looking at the imagery of this card, we are easily reminded of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. On a symbolic level, that story outlines the attempt by part of humanity to erect a monument to itself, so high and so great that even the glory of God would be overshadowed by it. In today's society we can still see that ambition in the relentless effort to subject all the forces of nature to our technology and engineering. On a more personal level, we can also see a psychological analogy with that story. The man of today dwells in the realm of his mind, usually without any contact with the higher, spiritual realm. This card explains the fragility and transience of that condition. As so many times before in the Major Arcana, but this time with added emphasis, we receive the message to build our castles and towers on solid ground. We can see that The Tower stands in darkness. Its nature is totally artificial, man-made, standing all alone. It symbolizes our individual consciousness; here we are dealing almost exclusively with the mental constructs of our own mind. The Tower is the way we look at the world: our thoughts, our esoteric conclusions, our religious beliefs and misbeliefs, our images of others and, finally, our self-image. All of our existence is a pure expression of our mind; even our body and destiny are, on the most subtle level, a long-term product of our own mind. And that mind, as this card depicts, is a totally artificial, man-made structure. From the simplest to the most complex constructs around us, everything is just a building block of The Tower we create every day. What, then, is the message of this card? The message of The Tower is that our mind, left to its own devices, leads us into a realm of immeasurable darkness. Even if it is oriented towards truth, it is incapable of full attainment on its own. But then comes a lightning bolt that usually shatters The Tower and all the artificial conceptions it is built from. Yet the lightning bolt also brings us light and another, much higher perspective, and one thing is very certain: sooner or later it will happen to all of us. The lightning bolt comes from above and brings us transformation through contact with divine inspiration, our own higher consciousness. We can freely say that on the inner level, the destruction of The Tower is the breaking down, to its very foundations, of the fortress called the ego.
On the card
The Tower stands in utter darkness, just like The Devil, the previous card. Here too the blackness indicates an absence of light. But in this card a divine spark from above suddenly brings light. It breaks the tower, and two people fall. It seems as if they are falling from one of the three windows of the tower. The man is our conscious mind and the woman is our subconscious mind. Both are accomplices in building and maintaining The Tower, but now their construction meets its end in a flash of superconsciousness from above. Yet it will not be crushed into nothing: it is burning, going through transformation and transmutation. On top of the tower was a crown, but a false crown, representing false willpower, so it had to be removed before the light could enter. Once it is removed, the illusion that we exist as separate personalities ends. The Tower represents the false concept of separation, and so it stands alone in the darkness. Without separation there is no more need to hide in castles and towers. Around the tower we can see 22 Yods resembling flames of fire. Yod is the first letter of the holy name of God. The 22 Yods represent the 22 basic modes of consciousness symbolized by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. All of our mental conceptions are in some way connected with our language, so it is very natural that we see a resemblance between this imagery and the story of the Tower of Babel.
Upright
The Tower at its best indicates sudden changes, flashes of insight and the tearing down of misconceptions you once believed in. This card speaks of necessary change, perhaps a blessing in disguise.
Reversed
There is a sense of sudden disaster, emotional turmoil, some kind of downfall. Fantasies and daydreams will not help you, so it is best to part with them now and soften the pace of change if possible. Do not place your faith in illusions of security, because it is time for change, and transformation will occur one way or another.