Tower



The Tower Arcana represents pride, change, and falsehood. This arcana is often given to prideful characters or characters within false security. In some interpretations, this can often be ominous. Personas of this Arcana excel resisting physical damage.

Tarot Card Analysis
Sometimes, when accepted and welcomed, divine wisdom and enlightenment flow freely like a calm river. The rest of the time, wisdom is blocked until it rages forth like a tidal wave and crushes anything in its path, including the recipient of the wisdom. This is the energy of the Tower card, an energy very similar to Death in that it is both a destructive and a creative force. When a building is old and decrepit, it must be demolished so that a new structure may stand in its place. The same is true of the symbolic Tower. When old attitudes and beliefs are outdated, you will have to let go of them, whether you like it or not.

In most cases, the latter is true - you do not want to give up your ideals, and you cling to them like a child to his precious security blanket. This attempt at security ensures nothing, really, except a disastrous change that will painfully rip away that which you did not discard of your own volition. But there is a greater purpose at work here. The power of the soul and the mind is far greater than the energy of some physical thing, and it can be taken with you anywhere and always. To extend the security blanket analogy, the blanket must be taken away so the child can find power and security within himself, instead of within some material object.

When you believe material objects are more powerful than spirit and mind, you start building up a Tower of falsehoods on a very unstable foundation. If, by some miracle of engineering, it does not collapse under its own weight, you will eventually push it over yourself. The Tower falls not because Fate says so but because something within can no longer endure the strain it must bear. Sooner or later it will give out. This is a humbling experience because its lesson is that no one is invincible. The problem for most people is that they concentrate on the negatives and ignore the great opportunity that has been given to them.

The fire of the Tower card burns away all that is negative and outdated, but it leaves behind all that is positive, all that is necessary to begin your life again and replace all that was lost. In essence, this is the energy of Death and Temperance combined, because sweeping-away and building-up both happen at about the same time on the Tower. As soon as the tumbling figures on the Rider-Waite card land on the jagged rocks of reality, they are greeted with the influx of wisdom that they need to survive.

Reversed Meaning
When reversed, The Tower remains in place. The lies stay intact and no one suffers. The person believes all the lies told to them and they never realize the truth. However, though the lies are never exposed, the person's values still remain intact, so something positive may come out of it, especially if the value the person believes in is positive and is related to the upkeep of the lies.

In The Tower arcanum, the lightning bolt that strikes down The Tower is the motion. When blocked, something is holding the truth, the lightning bolt, from being revealed even though the truth wants to or must be known. A husband, for example, refuses to tell his wife that she's fat because it would hurt her feelings even though he'd prefer her to be thin. However, the wife might think that because the husband hasn't said anything, the husband might like her like this. So she keeps getting fat for her husband's sake, yet in the end, both are unhappy.

If you reverse the entire arcanum, the lightning that strikes the Tower is now being shot from the Tower into the sky. The people are entering back into the Tower. The base of the Tower is also the ruling force of the arcanum. In other words, the people within the Tower refuse to see the truth and lash back against those that would tell them the truth with their lightning. The lies of the Tower set the foundation for the entire arcanum.

Arcana Advantages

 * Innate Ability: Resist Physical Damage
 * Stat Boosts: +2 END, +1 STR
 * Skill Boosts: +5 Stamina