LOSS OF ILLUSION

• The Tower, or "Lightning Struck Tower," represents the fall of earthly attachments and false structures of the egotistical mind. The lightning bolt is wisdom from the Higher Self, displacing the crown.
  
  
• The crown is related to Keter, but when it is misused. It describes false materialism, putting the wrong things on the altar. It shows the result of the wrong use of will. It's fall shows the price of being presumptuous.
  
  
• Crowns appear in Key 2, Key 3, Key 4, Key 5, Key 7, Key 11, Key 14, Key 16, Keter, and Malchut.
  
  
• The solitary tower shows the error of personal isolation. The 22 falling Yods represent the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, floating in air to show their power is not of the Earth.
  
  
• Some say this is the fall of Adam, or the Tower of Babel - the destruction of artificial attempts to reach divinity. The letter Peh means "mouth," as in the source of speech, connected to the confounding of human speech at the fall of Babel. This is also a lesson about the power of speech, and the importance of controlling it, for our own benefit and the benefit of others.

  "Our eyes and ears do not always depend on our will power,
  but our tongues do."
  the Zohar
  
  

• Peh is a "Double Letter," with two sounds.
• The "Diamond Thunderbolt" is a masculine symbol, representing sudden, cutting-through wisdom or realization. Plutarch said that lightning imparted fertility to the soil it struck.

  

  
  

• The lightning bolt enters the tree at the top, and passes through all of the Sephirot.

  

At any given moment, there are approximately 2000 thunderstorms occurring on Earth. This results in the planet being struck by lightning an estimated 100 Times a Second.

• The people fall headfirst, showing that their mental structures are being broken down and replaced. They are clothed in red and blue, showing conscious and unconsious mind concealing (the clothes) underlying nature.
  
  
• Some see the Tree of Life as the original Garden of Eden; with the male and female poles united. The "Fall from Grace" is the separating of humanity from divinity, as incarnation is the process of separating and reuniting with Source.
  
  
• Key 16 spans the tree, defining the first manifestation of separating desire, in the Realm of Personality. Moving up the tree, through individuation, desire eventually rejoins the source at Keter.
  
  
  
• In the Yesod/Hod/Netzach/Tipharet crucible, Key 16, The Tower, is the burned-off slag, while Temperance, Key 14, is the purified metal.
  
  
• This Key looks at the dialectic process; the endless argument of thesis and antithesis becoming synthesis, and synthesis becoming the new thesis. It also symbolizes a clean break with the past.

Mars

Mars' placement at birth sets the character for the person's vitality, and urge to accomplish. It represents endurance, the ability to heal, courage, and confidence.

Mars infuences the desire nature and sex drive. Afflictions to Mars create inhibitions, timidity, cruelty, violence, excessive anger, impotence, lack of vigor.

Mars takes 687 days to complete its solar orbit though the zodiac.

Mars adds strength wherever it is placed in the chart. Hard aspects with other planets can 'angry up the blood,' or perhaps impair Mars. Easy aspects can increase strength, or focus Martian energy like a laser.

MARS

Mars is Exalted in Capricorn, and Rules Scorpio. Mars' detriment is Taurus/Libra and its fall is Cancer.

The Sepher associated with Mars is Gevurah.