MAJOR ARCANA
XVI · Major Arcana
The Tower
UPRIGHT
Lightning strikes the crown from the Tower and two figures fall through the dark sky, the foundation of what they had built revealing itself to have been built on nothing. The Tower is the sudden, unignorable demolition — the revelation that the structure was false, the moment the lie collapses of its own weight. It is brutal, and it is honest.
REVERSED
Reversed, the Tower is the strike postponed, or the strike that landed but whose lesson the querent has refused to read. The card can mark a person clinging to a tower already cracked, or one in the long, disoriented aftermath of a collapse they have not yet allowed themselves to grieve. The lightning, either way, has done its work.
Return to the full deck, or draw the cards and see The Tower in context.