What does The Tower mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: A crisis postponed or lived internally; tensions accumulate, so it is better to face them before they explode.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of The Tower?

In the Golden Dawn system The Tower corresponds to the Hebrew letter Pe, path 27 of the Tree of Life between Netzach and Hod, the element Spirit and Mars in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana

The Tower

destruction · awakening · liberation · crisis · purification

A reflective starting point

What is The Tower asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

Read this card in a ritual Draw it from your own deck

Upright

Something false is collapsing: do not hold it up. The crisis makes room for truth and a healthier rebuilding.

At first sight

The sudden collapse of structures, conflicts, crisis. It points to events that tear down illusions and force change.

Within you

The moment when the ego is shaken by an unavoidable truth; the giving way of defences that precedes liberation.

On the path

Path 27 from Netzach to Hod, the letter Pe (the mouth, 80) and Mars: the lowest horizontal path, where fire destroys in order to purify. What is built on illusion cannot withstand the gaze that awakens.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals chaos, rage, violence, destruction for its own sake.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

A crisis postponed or lived internally; tensions accumulate, so it is better to face them before they explode.

In love, work and spirit

Love. Ruptures or crises that reveal hidden truths; the end of an illusion.

Work. Sudden changes, organisational collapses; a chance to rebuild on new foundations.

Spirit. The awakening that demolishes the illusion of a separate, fortified self.

Correspondences

Pe פ · path 27 (Netzach – Hod) · Spirit · Mars

Crowley's note

In the Thoth Tower the Eye of Horus strikes the building with lightning while the jaws of Dis belch flames; the dove and the lion-headed serpent show that destruction carries peace and renewed desire with it.