Major Arcana titles: La Maison-Diev

Fulgour

round and round

Mars (The Emperor) rules Aries (The Hierophant),
and is exalted in Capricorn (The Tower) opposite
Cancer (Justice) where Jupiter (Judgement) exalts.
 

ArcanoMáximo

"but I have absolutely no idea what the billiard Balls are all about" Rosanne

Jodorowski says may be a cosmic dance or even balls of condensed energie, and even gives the example of when is beaten the milk that small balls of grease are formed in the surfice. To me it recalls those decorations of oil bottles, of brilliant colors with bubbles moving inside, but i guess in The Tower they don't move so slow:D !!!
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
Flamen Dialis could or had the right to throw people off the roof of the Temple on Capitoline Hill. He could also throw slave chains off the same and free the slave.
The latter might be the more relevant meaning here. Depends on if this was known when tarot sprang up: interesting connexion.
The tower seems to have mostly three windows- the Trinity
Perhaps not primarily, as the Marseilles usually has them looking quite phallic, one tall window flanke by two 'gonads', which reinforces the orgasmic aspect of the surface meaning - it is a very complicated symbol-nexus here, the most complex one of all for me, even though complexity itself is specifically symbolized by LeMonde I think. But it is not the trinity that is having its crown burned off, rather something parading in importance in its place (externals). For 16 is the atomic number of sulfur, found primarily in the skin, hair, and nails.
...but I have absolutely no idea what the billiard Balls are all about ~Rosanne
They puzzle me as well, so I will speculate out loud. Certainly they represent debris, perhaps the resolution of the shattered into its constituent elemental units, units being rounds (ultimately). Hebrew ayin is bardic O and its oldest character a wheel without spokes, meaning in the act of spinning round, to symbolize the driving motor, so to speak. O is 4 (making the round of the four quarters), hence 16's square root... but since 16 is S-willow and stands at the summit or keystone of the Royal Arch (the 'head', according to Sefer Yetzirah), perhaps the little "O"s stand for the vapors of mercury (O's column in the alchemical vessel) rising up all the way to the level of S (top of vessel), these vapors being what compel that it be a closed (round) vessel. In a sense of course they are the hanging boughs of the willow that mess up one's hair (though willow leaves are anything but round).

The two dots between crown and flame are our projection that there is a being behind the misfortune or shattered illusion, though that being is in reality an aspect of the greater self (our own thinker, who willow-weaves the threads its doer spins).

One final capping rumination. As S, it is, in runic, a lightning-bolt (vertical zig-zag). In The Two and the One (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1965), page 22, Mircea Eliade said, "The rapidity of spiritual illumination has been compared in many religions to lightning. Furthermore, the swift flash of lightning rending the darkness has been given the value of a mysterium tremendum which, by transfiguring the world, fills the soul with holy terror." This trump is not the oak ("god who makes fire for a head") LePendu who receives the enlightening flash, but rather the flash itself. (Though it aims for the summit it veers as it approaches its target usually, leading to its being 'gathered in' by the laterally extending 'arms' of oak, making oak the most common 'burnt offering'.) The orgasm, which like this flash leaves the individual somewhat changed, is its external 'caricature', save when the aim is procreation, in which case it becomes more of a 'solidification' of it I guess (a talismanic 'harnessing' of Light). But note the fiery 'bolt' hits the tower's head, not its base: it casts duality down to its base. I suppose the relation to orgasm, then, is the latter's unifying effect when the goal of the couple is united in desire for offspring (lawful invocation of the Name).
 

venicebard

Of course! (I'm an idiot)

I figured out what the 'billiard balls' are. (Boy I can be slow at times.) Pollen.

For spring is a flowering, a sacrificing of oneself for the future. It goes 4-8-16-0. The end of the flowering, just before the wilting of the flower into 'nothing', is 16, the escape of the pollen from the flower which ensures that, though that flower perish, there will be more.

(Duh.)
 

venicebard

Afterthought, ontopic

Perhaps that gives a shade of meaning to the title LaMaisonDieu: 'the god-house' is the one in building of which bricks are generations.
 

Rosanne

I Like the pollen image, if one was to go down that road- especially as it ends the the sequence with an 0. But how about a left field thought in your direction VeniceBard - how about Straif- Sloe Berrys(Hawthorn-Gin), the strength we need to resist and defeat adversity? Maybe those falling were the generation that 'fell off the wagon' and were incapable of warding off an attack :D ~Rosanne
 

ArcanoMáximo

vinecebard, the "pollen" idea is avery illustrative one, very original. And don't worry, the geniuses have always been distracted :D
And i was thinking in what Rosanne said. Then i remember that some Marseille decks shows some little red hearts among the balls too. May be related with those situations when
we challenge our own limits and minimize the span of the obstacles, then the reality hit us, and puts in evidence our vulnerability. The three windows probably refer to our narrow vision, the "Quijotes" against the mills. "Le Mat" against "La Mansion Dev"...
 

ArcanoMáximo

I think that we can also relate those balls with those color stains that we see immediately after looking directly to the Sun. Undoubtedly there are things with which we have to be cautious.
The doctors point out that when somebody loses the conscience for a faint or something like that usually sees also stains, balls of colors, and they give it a name that I don't remember well, a name that begins with "Photo..."
 

venicebard

Very interesting, Arcano. Yeah, I think we have the expression "seeing spots" or "spots before our eyes" or something? Put this together with 'pollen' and we have the notion that spots that appear before our eyes when misfortune (or shattering of illusion) overwhelms us should act as 'pollen' in the sense of generating thinking: a lesson being learned.

And I like your LeMat versus the windmill! Vivid image. Yes, the windows being our narrowed vision goes well (symbolically) with their usual phallic arrangement, man's narrowed vision resulting from his sexual, meaning non-whole, nature.

I was about to answer Rosanne's comment seriously, then realized she was jesting with her 'falling off the wagon' bit. I will say though that berries are usually attached to something, a twig or our fingers, and not simply falling through the air like bubbles. The hawthorn berries are probably the little rounds on Quixote's (LeMat's) mantle and cap, and the blackthorn ones the tufts of smoke in Gabriel's war-cloud (XX). Just guessing, since I might not recognize either upon encountering them (I must confess).
 

kwaw

Sagitta

An alternative name for the card,Sagitta [arrow] suggests a connection with the zodiacal sign Sagittarius [archer] which corresponds to the ninth house, and one of the names for the ninth house is the 'house of god'. Sagiitarius is ruled by Jupiter, and there is another 'pythagorean' connection with Jupiter through an alternative name for the card, 'fire'. Philolaus the Pythagorean "places fire in the middle at the centre, which he calls the hearth of the universe, the house of Jupiter, the mother of the Gods, and the basis, coherence, and measure of nature." In Simplicius de Cælo it is written, "But those who more clearly perceive these affairs, call the fire in the middle a demiurgic power, nourishing the whole earth from the midst, and exciting and enlivening whatever it contains of a frigid nature: on which account some call it the tower of Jupiter."

Jupiter of course means God the Father [Dieu pater], so we have the fiery hearth [Vesta] as the 'house' or 'tower' of 'God the Father'.

The Hearth of the Universe is the cosmic centre, around which the stars, moon and sun rotate, thus relating not only to number [16, the magical square of jupiter] but by placement at the start of the 'cosmic' sequence of cards. Finally, it may also be relevant that Jupiter is the God of Lightening.

Kwaw