November 8-10, 2011: XVI - The Tower
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http://association.tarotstudies.org/images/HebrewLettersA/fe.gif
XVI
THE TOWER
(Mars)MEDITATION COLOR: Red.
HEBREW LETTER: Peh, mouth, especially as an organ of speech. From PYH, “breathing”; thus, mouth as the place where breath flows. Also, any opening, entrance, ingress/egress route, as in “mouth of a cave.” Sound p suggests projectile, power, penetration. Greek Phi suggests by shape the union of Phallus and Kteis. Greek Pi is the value that relates any radius to its circumference.
CARD NAME: The older name, “House of God,” connects it to Beth and The Magus. A “tower” is distinguished by its height in comparison to its width (having various testosterone-related themes, from the obvious phallic idea to “towering over,” etc.). Nearly always, the word implies a human construct. Normally equated with strength, firmness, etc.
ESOTERIC MEANING: The Exciting Consciousness. Through it is created the Life-Breath of every creature under the Supreme Orb, as well as the motion of them all.
TREE of LIFE: Hod to Netzach. (Links ‘Glory’ and ‘Victory’; or Intellect with Desire. Force meets Form, especially the influx of unbounded Vital Force into mental structures, either to invigorate or shatter them.)
ESOTERIC TITLE: The Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty
TANTRIC & ALCHEMICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Male orgasm.
DIVINATION: Sudden and eruptive change of circumstances. Overwhelming of existing structures by a sudden and tremendous energy. Revelation, disclosure, exposure. Danger, unforeseen catastrophes. Strength, energy, fighting (quarrel, combat, war), courage; or destruction, danger, ambition, fall, ruin. Destabilization or destruction as a preparation for new creation.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8spMwwx2UMU/TZEJdrApn8I/AAAAAAAAAe4/9XonetXoSlc/s1600/thoth%2Btower.png
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What was once shrouded in the darkness is now open in plain sight. (The Eye) It has been distinguished: brought from the background to the foreground. And now something can be done about it.
Perhaps we don't like what we see; perhaps we really like what we see and we want to act on it quickly and with urgency. Either way, a new level of energy has been discovered...or uncovered.
The darkness served its purpose however because it eventually became the access of this transformative energy (Lion-Serpent). We still have to deal with the darkness as we move forward into this new space carried by this new energy but now we are equipped to deal with it because we're out to build something new (dove with branch).
But in order for this new structure to be built we have to get rid of the old one. It's scary because there's going to be an impact on us and the environment around us. And we know that once we start the transformative process, it ain't gonna stop. In fact, it's going to happen faster than we expect. And there's going to be some casualities (lightening blasting the tower, people falling out)
But it's ok because we are working with the Truth. And we are dealing with what's so. And there's no room for anything save for the Truth when we're dealing with what's so...what's is happening at the moment (fire in the backgound) And standing in this awareness, the Truth becomes the only thing that matters because with it, we will build what needs to be built and we will build it aright. Every thought, every action and every word spoken is laced with the Truth. (mouth with fire coming out of it)
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Last night, during a conversation I was having with a friend of mine, the idea of the "Tower of Babel" entered my mind. We were having a difficult time understanding one another and I was experiencing some frustration about it. We were using the same words yet they seemed to have completely different meanings and convey different messages to one another. Occassionally there were times where the communication was crystal clear but for the most part we were just babbling to one another.
What I came away with is that our linguistic constructs are like towers. Words and ideas are the bricks. Our emotions are the mortar. We live inside of these constructs and when we perceive a threat to them, we do what we can to preserve them. However, once we realize how limiting and constraining these constructs are, we are now faced with the option of tearing them down or residing inside them until they ultimately decay.
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Yes, this is the Path that equilibrates Hod and Netzach and, in the path of initiation, represents Hod opening to Netzach.
The Tower is Hod, the form and structure of the intellect as presently conceived. The lightning (in the context of the card) is Netzach, the influx of experience (or, as some call it, Truth).
I word it this way because, in the broader sense, the Lightning Flash is from Kether all the way through to Malkuth; but in the context of this card we are especially seeing the experience of Hod opening itself to Netzach. It's the old koan, "Is there room for the truth in your reality?"
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@Al-Shariyf said
"Last night, during a conversation I was having with a friend of mine, the idea of the "Tower of Babel" entered my mind. We were having a difficult time understanding one another and I was experiencing some frustration about it. We were using the same words yet they seemed to have completely different meanings and convey different messages to one another. Occassionally there were times where the communication was crystal clear but for the most part we were just babbling to one another."
Yes, experiences exactly like this have led me to the same conclusion.
To my mind, it's not just you and your friend. It's everyone. It's our state of existence. There's something that gets in between - especially as one gets closer and closer to trying to communicate about realities which are beyond the self/other gap. There's like a necessary veil of some sort. It seems to function on its own. My only imagined justification for it is that it preserves some necessary boundary of personality. The destruction of this boundary in a moment of illumination - the shocking, inexpressible Tower experience.
Yes, I'm sure this could sound like crazy-talk, but I've spent quite some time fighting it, trying to dominate it, bypass it, talk around it... It's like fighting a necessary function of reality. So, those experiences are where this comes from. The times I think I'm speaking the most clearly and plainly - there it is again - a hard line between my "reality" and yours.
And though there is no connection I know of other than linguistic (and that very questionable), I've always associated recognition and understanding of the Babel-ish state of our existence with the seal of BABALON.
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"To my mind, it's not just you and your friend. It's everyone. It's our state of existence. There's something that gets in between - especially as one gets closer and closer to trying to communicate about realities which are beyond the self/other gap."
Right off the cuff I have a few considerations about that:
1). Language is inherently *limiting *and limited. Consider in those moments of communication failure, the limits of language have been reached and we're left to deal with the raw, seemingly uncommunicable emotions. What this looks like is having a conversation with someone, wanting to say something, but experiencing a lack of words to drape the desired message in.
"There's like a necessary veil of some sort. It seems to function on its own. My only imagined justification for it is that it preserves some necessary boundary of personality. The destruction of this boundary in a moment of illumination - the shocking, inexpressible Tower experience."
2).I believe the elusive veil you speak of is meaning which varies from person to person and is reliant on one's point of view at any given moment. Meaning is applied, we're the ones that apply it and it's applied so fast that we don't realize that we're applying it.
Consider what 666 means to you and consider what it means to a Christian. 666 is very significant to those who are called Thelemites and those call themselves Christians (I worded it that way for a very specific and intentional purpose). 666 to one who would be called a Thelemite is holy. 666 to a Christian is unholy. 1 number, 2 different contexts to 2 different observers with 2 different linguistic constructs. The variable being meaning.
I assert that, in that particular example, the only way to reconcile the viewpoints is to obliterate meaning
3). Jim mentioned this before and I got it intellectually back then...I finally experienced it fully last night and that is that Truth is location-based. There were many things that my friend said to me that I knew to be false but were very very true for her and vice versa. But those moments where we actually connected, the experience of it gave me the feeling that we were standing in the same place so to speak. That to me is true communication. You and another are in the same space so that there is no difference or distance between the two of you.
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Yes... on the nonphysical planes, there is not time and space, but there is proximity. Language tracks this with terms like "close," "position," "where I'm at," etc. You got it!
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Thanks Jim.
I started to experience this when I was working with the Death card. On the physical plane, it showed up at a training were I was taught how to listen to another person and repeat back to them the the words they said while experiencing their emotional state. It was like I was temporarily another person.
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I will attempt to de-personify misunderstanding.
Yet even as I type, specific events come to mind, and anger builds.
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But, Aegis... isn't that exactly what you were talking about?
I think anyone being correctly understood is relatively rare. (That's one reason it's so valued.) Instead, we usually tend to mostly serve as projection props on each other's stage.
I thought that was the point you were making.
Perhaps I... misunderstood.
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I'm trying very hard to challenge my own emotionally held ideas. I'm trying very hard to be open to explanations that aren't solely internally and experientially derived. I'm so accustomed to being deeply and existentially contradicted, I can't seem to hear the parts where people agree with me anymore.
But if there are only about 3 people in the world who get the gist of what I'm saying, what's the point? You know? It's all for nothing. Because those 3 people already get it better than I do.
So, I'm trying to listen and learn.
It's kind of what I'm saying, but I've experienced it less as simple misunderstanding at times and more as direct interference (probably on the part of someone's Angel). As if, "No! That's too much for this one!" [Cue dog barking, baby crying, phone ringing, mis-hearing, etc..] Sometimes it's just all too perfect. I've had to learn to stop fighting it, but sometimes it frustrates the **** out of me. But, I guess, if I could restate it, I'd say, "It's unLawful to force your meaning onto someone else. Dire judgments prevent it."
And that "construct" of reality - I don't know how to say it - the fact that our experience works that way on the level of metaphysical Law. To me, it just points to Babalon, in that she takes all as they are. Period. Don't try to change her. Can you love her? Can you share her with everyone else, so to speak? 'Cause she doesn't care what they believe.
I don't know... I'm drifting into o'er lofty areas.
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Exactly. Meaning doesn't mean anything. It's invented by each person as part of how they're playing their game.
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"Exactly. Meaning doesn't mean anything. It's invented by each person as part of how they're playing their game"
BOOM!
Aegis was it you that created a thread asking the question of what it meant to consider every action as a particular dealing of the divine?
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The Tower
I used an extremely powerful and fast acting (legal) psychedelic to propel me into the unknown, Salvinorin-A. With trepidation, I plunged in at my angels behest. Come up is within 30 seconds of inhalation.
The room grew dark, my body feeling like it was getting sucked through realities sieve. Before me I saw hunched childish figures with flashlights peering down the mouth of a great Cave which I was pulled down, down, down. I landed in a strange world standing behind a goddess who looked like my wife; she was dressed as a queen and I was dressed as a knight. Before us lie a crystalline icosahedron castle http://www.mathgoody.com/5-4-Polyhedra/fuller.jpg
In notes Taken, my wife reports that i yelled, "I will follow you my queen!"Suddenly I was torn from this beautiful world and set firmly in a frightening scene of three figures rotating around me. One laughed maniacally, the other was silent and the third had an aura of vengeance. My consciousness shifted from the center of the triangle and shifted among the three. My wife reports in the notes that I laughed maniacally and made gestures as if pointing and yelled, "FUUUUUCK YOU!!!!" I must've been occupying mercury at that moment. A voice then began to speak, saying "ONE! COMBINE!" A multidimensional triangle shape appeared before my eyes and drew all three figures into it's center.
Next, I felt what my notes describe me proclaiming as "THE GOD ATOMIC!" I felt the most pure indomitable power imaginable. This is when I began to come to, recognizing my surroundings. I was very anxious because it was an archetypal overload. In fact, I felt like my personality had been blown to smithereens. That's why I'm attributing this experience to first, the tower, although there are obvious elements of Fortune via the experience of Centrum In Centri Trigono. This experience was NOT fun, but I know from experience that it has laid the groundwork necessary for my next step in spiritual evolution.
ps. I hope I have understood the desire of this thread by posting the above experience with the Tower archetype.
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"ps. I hope I have understood the desire of this thread by posting the above experience with the Tower archetype"
you have
Your share was very relevant -
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"I didn't realize it would do anything other than make me more mindful. But... it can really f with your head. "
"Meaning doesn't mean anything. It's invented by each person as part of how they're playing their game"
Makes sense?
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So many story-lines. So many games.
Honestly?
re-configurating...
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Yeah. Honestly.
Imagine (I'm not saying it's so, but it's a worthy exercise)... imagine that, even though there are billions of people (among other beings), that everybody is only aware of themselves and their own projections.
Imagine... other people exist and move about and have interaction, but aren't seen for themselves. They're only seen as props and stand-ins. Their words (when accurately heard), their actions (when noticed and accurately registered) are seen as supporting or interfering with the play that is already acting out on stage.
And imagine... that everybody is in a different play... a different story... a different part of the story... oblivious not only to other people's stories, but even to the fact that other people are in different stories!
Only something as large and integrated as the universe could coordinate a dance this complex. That it more or less goes off fine most of the time is a tribute to the splendor of the universe and the dullness and ignorance of most of the players. (It helps, in this imagined world, to be really dense and oblivious to the bigger picture... that is, if you just want to get on with your life.)
Now... I'm not saying this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It's an imagination. Even within the imagined framework, it could be no more than a plot structure in my own play.
But I will assert that the above fantasy is closer to what actually happens, day in and out, than is the picture most people usually have of the world. Connecting with someone isn't just a matter of getting to know some things about them. It's a matter of learning what play they're in, what language it's written in, and being able to understand their words and actions within the context of their story line - not your own.
Intimate connection - really connecting to someone - is profoundly world-shaking because it actually requires the recognition of an entirely different universe. (Not just different ideas about things. Not just some differences in using language. But everything different at the fundamental level.)
Yeah. Honestly.
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I feel like I could write for days and days about the alternatives.
Instead of "The Great Collusion".... attempting to substitute "I *am divided *for love's sake... for the chance of union..."