Episode 103: On the Tower, the Sixteenth Card of the Tarot

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2021

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Continuing their series on the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the card nobody wants to see in a reading – The Tower. Featuring lightning bolts, plumes of ominous smoke, and figures plummeting from the windows, the Tower’s meaning at first glance seems clear: “pride comes before a fall,” as the old adage goes. But as JF and Phil delve into the details, they note not only the card’s connection to the Biblical tower of Babel and the fall of man, but also its relevance to the present era’s systems of control and communication breakdown. This discussion leads them to search for an antidote to the Tower's message of destruction. References Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” Wilco, “Radio Cure” Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies George Cukor (dir.), A Star is Born Performativity, sociological concept Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle Jaques Ellul, The Technological Society Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdstud J.F. Martel.
0:52.8	This week, we discuss the 16th major archaenum of the
0:56.6	tarot of Marseille, the tower, also known as the Tower of Destruction and the Maison-Dieu.
1:03.6	The image will be familiar to many Weird Studies listeners. A pillar of fire from heaven
1:08.6	blows off the top of a tower and sends its inhabitants plummeting from its heights
1:13.5	The allusion to the tower of Babel seems obvious
1:18.7	Genesis 114
1:20.2	And they said
1:21.5	Go to let us build a city and a tower
1:24.5	Whose top may reach unto heaven
1:26.4	And let us make us a name, lest we
1:28.8	be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
1:32.8	Again, our main source for this discussion was the book Meditations on the Tarot, whose
1:37.7	anonymous author ends his chapter on the card as follows.
1:41.4	The 16th major archaanum of the taro is a warning addressed to all authors of systems
1:46.5	when an important role is assigned to a mechanical ingredient, intellectual, practical, occult,
1:52.7	political, social, and other systems. It invites them to devote themselves to tasks of
1:57.8	growth instead of those of construction, to tasks as cultivators and guardians
2:02.5	of the garden instead of as builders of the Tower of Babel."
	...

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