Barbara Walker Tarot - 16: The House of God

Also known as the Lightning-Struck Tower, this card shows a lightning bolt breaking the tower’s crown, while two figures fall from the wreck. It may have referred to medieval Europe’s ecclesiastical establishment, sometimes called the Proud Tower, as well as the House of God. A popular prophecy of the fourteenth century predicted destruction of the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire, church and state, by the enlightening lightning god Lucifer; thus, the two falling figures could be pope and emperor. The card refers to the overthrow of old, outworn habits by a new, perhaps painful readjustment, the destruction of pride, the sweeping away of too-rigid structures.