Meaning
Smith's Tower stands on a rocky peak and is struck by lightning: its crown is blown off, flames break from the windows, and two figures fall head first through a dark sky full of falling drops. Waite says the card shows ruin in all its aspects, and reads it as the house of life brought down when it has been built on what is false.
The Golden Dawn gave the card Peh, a double letter glossed as mouth, and the planet Mars, and titled it the Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty; Book T's own name for the card is the Blasted Tower. On the order's tree it is path 27, the crossbar between Netzach and Hod.
We read the card as the sudden break: a structure that could not stand comes down at once, and what was hidden is lit up. Waite's fortune-telling list for the Tower is the darkest of all, ending with unforeseen catastrophe; we quote it below as history only.
In the birth cards
The Tower belongs to Greer's seventh constellation, with the Chariot, 7. It is the Personality card of everyone whose total is 16, with the Chariot as Soul card, on 3.9 percent of the days from 1900 to 2030. A 16-7 reaches both cards and has no Hidden Factor; the Tower is the Hidden Factor of a single 7, on 7.2 percent of days.
The Tower is the card of no sign. As a year card it comes 10 times in the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 for a 15 June birthday.
History and names
The Marseille decks call the card La Maison Dieu, the house of God, and some seventeenth-century decks show a tree or tower struck by lightning and call it La Foudre. Like the Devil, the card is missing from the finest of the Milanese sets of the 1450s.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- “The Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty” sourced
- Waite's fortune-telling list (1911), upright
- “Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe”, quoted as history; Waite called such meanings artificial and arbitrary sourced
- Greer's name for the constellation
- Mastery through Change (1987, 2021) sourced
- Our line for the birth-card chain
- 16-7: Breakthrough driven by will our construction
- Book T's name
- The Blasted Tower sourced
- Other old names
- La Maison Dieu (Marseille); La Foudre, the Lightning (some seventeenth-century decks) sourced
How the schools read it
- Game decks (15th to 18th century)
- La Maison Dieu, the house of God, in the Marseille decks; the Lightning, La Foudre, in some others. Missing from the finest Milanese set.
- Golden Dawn, Book T
- Peh, the mouth, a double letter, and the planet Mars; path 27. Book T calls it the Blasted Tower and titles it the Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty.
- Waite and Smith (1909 to 1911)
- Ruin in all its aspects: the house of life brought down when it has been built on what is false.
- Mary K. Greer (1984 to 2021)
- In the constellation of 7 with the Chariot. The Personality card of a 16-7, a chain with no Hidden Factor, and the Hidden Factor of a single 7.
- EsoTerrier
- Read here as the sudden break: a structure that could not stand comes down at once, and what was hidden is lit up.
Claims about it
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The Tower predicts a catastrophe.
falseWhat the record shows: Waite printed the old fortune-telling list for it and called such meanings arbitrary. No card foretells events.
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The Tower's old one-line meaning on our chart was our own wording.
falseWhat the record shows: Our old line followed a modern keyword list too closely and was replaced in October 2026.
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Peh and Mars are the Tower's ancient correspondences.
disputedWhat the record shows: They are the Golden Dawn's, from about 1888.
