From Pruned:



The Broken Column House, photograph by Michael Kenna.  In the pleasure garden Le Desert de Retz, the creation of Francois Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville in the years leading up to the French Revolution.  M Monville was imprisoned during the Terror but escaped the guillotine with the fall of Robespierre.  He died in 1797 a ruined man.

To resume and conclude our discussion from yesterday (see below) of the significance of the Tower:

"The Tower is the only man-made structure in the Major Arcana (of the Tarot), and is thus a representation of structures, inner and outer, which we ourselves build... as defenses against life and as concealment to hide our less agreeable sides from others.  ... Honest encounter with the Devil invokes a profound inner integrity, and thus the Tower, the edifice which represents the values of the past, must fall. ...

"On a divinatory level... it is more creative to ask oneself where one is constricted or bound by a false persona or image, because a willing effort to break through this pretense [see tomorrow's post] can spare a great deal of anguish.   But it seems that the Tower will fall anyway, whether we are willing or unwilling... because something within the individual... can no longer live within such confines." [italics added].

From The Mythic Tarot, by Juliet Sharman-Burke and LIz Greene, cards illustrated by Tricia Newell.