Weird Studies/Tarot/The Tower

22 Jun 2022 - 19 Nov 2024

1 Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

I have to say that this is one of many Biblical stories where God is just being a total shit. What kind of parent refuses to let his children aspire to higher things? Fuck that guy.

Alright, that is the malatheism interpretation. A MotT interpretation would be something like, humanity can be the equal of the divine, or at least participate in the divine, but not by the techniques of the Tower (construction out of parts), but only via more organic procedures, involving growth and cultivation. It's very Christopher Alexander.

Jodorowsky has a liberatory reading of the card, that it represents the destruction of something oppressive.

What if it's not lightning from without but an explosion from within? An escape. Or an orgasm.

Towers are built of fear and a desire for isolation. Suspicion vs trust, and the West labors under the auspices of suspicion. What would cosmic trust mean, would it imply an ethical dimension to the universe? (Awkward transition to shilling for Patreon).

The failure of systematizing processes. Things of this world cannot contain things of the other world, and if they try they eventually get destroyed.

Trust ≡ Faith. Cain doesn't trust reality (for good reason, it rewards Abel but not him). He wanders, and founds the first cities, which are "structures of suspicion".

Alchemy, the cross as s symbol, two things crossed and interdependent (non-dualism). "The two poles of the human being live in the presence of each other". "The marriage of opposites". Rejects the surgical principle (separation). Jung was all about that, the shadow, etc.

Trump as a hate object (and also someone who interherntly promotes divisiveness).

You are the Tower, in your artificially constructed self. And that shit has to fall.

We're all actively participating in it now through these systems that have been built by these dictators. these despicable nerds.

Yeah. Is there a real me? The same kind of vertigo we get like looking at like Judy Garland and asking like, is there even a real person there to get to? Or is she just like an empty shell made up of these flickering images? That becomes a question that we ask ourselves. Something that has always puzzled me is the great popular. success of Judith Butler's idea of the performative self. Of course, Judith Butler didn't invent this concept, but you know, that idea that in very ordinary things like going to a restaurant with your friends, you're playing a certain role. Now, Butler and other critical theorists of that generation were promulgating this idea because they hated the idea of a centered self and they wanted to explode. (around 1:01 mark)