Pamela Colman Smith · RWS deck
The Major Arcana
The Tower
- Hebrew Letter
- DALETH
- Element
- MARS
- Path
- Chokmah ↔ Binah
- Polarity
- Wisdom / Folly
Upright · Wisdom
Force or desire to make a decision and getting through it clean. Boundaries drawn wisely, because discernment is used to create decisive action which knows exactly why boundaries are necessary.
Reversed · Folly
Boundaries drawn destructively, or not at all. Instinct is mistaken for decisiveness and discernment, action that moves without ever asking why a boundary is necessary. Folly is not knowing that discernment requires a sacrifice, not knowing that all conditions cannot coexist in the same circumstance all the time, and never learning this lesson.
The image
A tower stands on a rocky height, its crown blown clean off by a bolt of lightning striking from above. Flames pour from the windows. Two figures fall headfirst from the breach, arms thrown wide, caught mid-plunge rather than landed. Smaller flames, shaped like falling tongues, scatter down around them.
Daleth means door, and what's actually happening here is a door being forced open the hard way. This path runs between Chokmah, the first spark of direction, and Binah, the sea that gives form to whatever reaches it, and Mars rides that path, force meeting a threshold. The crown at the top isn't a coincidence to read past, it's the part of the tower that was sealing the opening. Struck off, the door this path always was gets forced wide, all at once, with nothing controlling how.
Learn how to read The Tower in a spread
This page shows you what The Tower means. Knowing how to read it — how it shifts next to the other cards, what the reversal is really telling you, and how to turn a spread into a clear answer — is what the RWS Decoded course and book teach, card by card.
