1. Tarot
2. Card meanings
3. The Tower

Major Arcana · XVI

The Tower

• deception
• a house of falsehood
• the end of a dispensation

Upright meaning

Sudden change to something built on a false premise. Waite reads the falling tower as a house of falsehood giving way; here we read it as a structure collapsing so that something truer can be seen.

Reversed meaning

Reversed, Waite says the same in a lesser degree. A prompt to address a cracking assumption early and calmly.

• oppression

Symbolism

Lightning strikes the crown from a tall tower on a rock; flames burst from its windows.

Group

Major Arcana

Element, astrology

Not given by Waite, so we give none

Source

Our own plain-English summary of A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1911), Part II §2 (symbolism); Part III §3 (divinatory meanings). The keywords are Waite’s own words. Waite’s fortune-telling lists also contain harsher terms; we keep to the reflective readings he gives and never state an event as certain.

Tarot is a tool for reflection, not a prediction of fixed outcomes. This is not medical, legal or financial advice.