Buddha Tarot - The Flaming Disk (XVI. The Tower)

Turning the Tower into the Flaming Disk is one of this deck author's more brilliant moves. It makes perfect sense, and it is one of the touches makes this deck so maddeningly chipper at times.

Mara has just flung the ultimate challenge at Gautama, asking him by what right he was preaching enlightenment. He has hurled the flaming disk at him. The response of Gautama-verging-on-the-Buddha is to touch the Earth as a witness to his lifetimes as a boddhisatva. And the flaming disk bursts into flowers and does not harm him.

All the details are there in the card, including the bodhi tree--it's really quite lovely--but it's unsettlingly upbeat for a Tower card. Buddha always makes this stuff look so easy. For us less-enlightened mortals, when that flaming disk comes at us, it means blisters at the least, not flowers. Flames or flowers, there's no ducking the Tower.

Isn't the Tower just some ego construction crumbling? It doesn't have to blister.
The people in the older decks actually look kind of relieved to be reaching terra firma:
http://www.letarot.com/jean-dodal/images/Dodal-original-web/XVI-web-bas.jpg
http://hdelboy.club.fr/maison_dieu_conver.jpg
http://www.letarot.com/dossiers-chauds/pourquoi-ce-nom-de-maison-dieu/images/noblet-XVI.jpg

I think the Buddha's earth-touching is wonderful parallel, and IMHO much closer to the true spirit of the card than the sensationalized RWS image.

Thank you for those links, Stella. That taught me a lot about the way I read The Tower.

Down In Flames!

stella01904 said:

Isn't the Tower just some ego construction crumbling? It doesn't have to blister.
The people in the older decks actually look kind of relieved to be reaching terra firma:
http://www.letarot.com/jean-dodal/images/Dodal-original-web/XVI-web-bas.jpg
http://hdelboy.club.fr/maison_dieu_conver.jpg
http://www.letarot.com/dossiers-chauds/pourquoi-ce-nom-de-maison-dieu/images/noblet-XVI.jpg

I think the Buddha's earth-touching is wonderful parallel, and IMHO much closer to the true spirit of the card than the sensationalized RWS image.

Click to expand...

Of course, I'm only talking about myself here. I find the crumbling of ego constructions to be a trying experience indeed. You're quite right that the people in the older decks do seem to be relieved at the fall.

Maybe the message is that the Tower only brings catastrophe if we think it does, otherwise it's just all a part of the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.

M_M~

You're welcome, Jon!!!
And MM, a bruised ego is never totally painless, I agree! Just not so horrific as RWS would have us think.

I think that the people in the older decks look relieved because they have been prisoners in Towers of their own making.
The Tower doesn't have a door so it was probably built from the inside.

stella01904 what is the deck in the last link, I really like the look of it.

I find it interesting that the Buddha is earthing and grounding himself by touching the earth and the people in the usual depictions of The Tower are doing the same thing, they're being brought back down to earth.
I've never thought of a Tower experience as being grounding before but I can see how it could be at times.

Sulis said:

stella01904 what is the deck in the last link, I really like the look of it.

Click to expand...

http://tarot-history.com/
http://tarot-history.com/boutique/index.php

I find it interesting that the Buddha is earthing and grounding himself by touching the earth and the people in the usual depictions of The Tower are doing the same thing, they're being brought back down to earth.
I've never thought of a Tower experience as being grounding before but I can see how it could be at times.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much Stella - I have the Noblet myself.. I obviously need to take it out for a play