The Tower

Upright

Lightning does not negotiate. Readers take the card as a shock: a sudden change, a truth coming out, or a structure giving way. Many readers also stress the release in it. What falls was not holding up well, and clearing it leaves room to rebuild on something sounder.

Reversed

A change being put off is how many readers take the reversed card, or fear of an upheaval that seems likely. Some take it as a narrow escape, or as a collapse happening slowly instead of all at once.

In love and at work

For relationships, it is linked with a revelation, a sudden break or an argument that clears the air. For work, readers see an abrupt change of plans, a reorganization, or an idea that overturns the old way of doing things.

In the picture

Lightning strikes the top of a tall stone tower on a rocky peak and knocks off its crown. Flames pour from the windows, two figures fall headfirst through the dark sky, and drops of light like small flames fall around them. The Golden Dawn assigned the card to Mars.

In a Caelumia profile

When The Tower comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Transformation, Restlessness.

Sources

• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
• Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.

Updated September 28, 2026.