It’s a major plot point in the archetypal story line. “The Confusion of Tongues.” An engraving by Gustave Doré via Wikimedia Commons. From this we learn that The Tower brings up both the possibility of harmonic cooperation and its opposite: sewing the seeds of discord. Millenia later, we see how misunderstanding and a lack of empathy across cultures has created many thousands of crises across the globe. So he scattered the people throughout the world and made it so that they all spoke different languages and could not understand each other. Unfortunately, their plan was foiled by Yahweh, who after visiting the tower realized that when humans act in unity they can do anything they can imagine. The people of Babel decided to build a city and a tower up to heaven because, for some reason, that was supposed to prevent the people from being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 1 According to the story, at that time the human race was unified and all spoke one language. The biblical story of The Tower of Babel describes a tower built in ancient Babylon (modern day Iraq).
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The Tower is an archetype that often indicates isolation and general discord. Princesses get locked in towers and need to be rescued. Towers appear frequently in our historical imagination. The influence of The Tower can also be seen on a larger scale simply by looking at any newspaper. The good news is, once you acknowledge it you can use some tarot wisdom, gathered over the centuries, to overcome whatever trouble The Tower is giving you. Whenever you experience a crisis, you can be sure the archetypal energy of Major Arcana XVI - The Tower is at work in your life.
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XVI The Tower from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. More than just telling your fortune, the tarot shows how universal principles work in the material world.