The PKT(1) begins, "Occult explanations attached to this card are
meagre and mostly disconcerting." Waite's description is itself meager
and disconcerting. The entry contains unclear, idiosyncratic language,
an uncompleted line of thought and oblique references to arcane
portions of his system.
    "It is idle to indicate that it depicts ruin in all its aspects,
because it bears this evidence on the surface." Don't fight the
obvious and first impressions count- the card means ruin.
    "It is said further that it contains the first allusion to a
material building, but I do not conceive that the Tower is more or
less material than the pillars which we have met with in three
previous cases." I believe the "first material building" is out of
the Martinist tradition. For example, I find it in Papus and Wirth,
but not Levi or Christian. Waite is splitting hairs. Their reference
is to the Tower as the first building, not the first man made
structural element.
    "I see nothing to warrant Papus in supposing that it is literally
the fall of Adam, but there is more in favour of his alternative- that
it signifies the materialization of the spiritual word." The English
translation of Papus reads "the material fall of Adam", and
"materialization of the spiritual letter".(2) Waite includes the fall
in his own meanings.(3) The English translation of Papus was first
published in 1892. The one we see today with Waite's intro was
published in 1910. Waite claims to have revised the text!
"Materialization of the spiritual word" corresponds to Waite's later
"ruin of the House of Life".
    "The bibliographer Christian imagines that it is the downfall of
the mind, seeking to penetrate the mystery of God." No critique or
comment other than perhaps an implied disagreement. The English
translation, which is later than Waite, reads "the downfall of the
Spirit that attempts to discover the mystery of God".(4)
    "I agree rather with Grand Orient that it is the ruin of the House
of Life, when evil has prevailed therein, and above all that it is the
rending of a House of Doctrine. I understand that the reference is,
however, to a House of Falsehood." A weak literary blind. Grand Orient
is, of course, Waite himself. The House usage is an affectation of
Waite's and means, simply enough, something like "place of" or "source
of". He called his small High Street cottage "House of Books", the
offices for Horlick's, "House of Commerce". "House of Life" could mean
something like the body or the world, but source or fount of life is
more appropriate in this context. As, for Waite, Life is analogous to
union, the House of Life is that experience of union and its hallows.
The card then typifies the ruination of "the integration of the of the
self-knowing spirit of man in the eternally Self-Knowing God, knowing
and being known therein." Anything that impairs this integration is
evil. The "House of Doctrine" would be a church, an order, a school,
some officially instituted body of doctrine. That it is doctrine means
it is being touted as Truth. That it is a "House of Falsehood" makes
it a corrupted body. "Above all" the card typifies the ruination and
overthrow of the False masquerading as Truth. There is no restoration
in this card.
    "It illustrates also in the most comprehensive way the old truth
that "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build
it."" An application of Psalm 127:1. The Jerusalem Bible notes
"Without God, human toil is useless."
    "There is a sense in which the catastrophe is a reflection from
the previous card, but not on the side of the symbolism which I have
tried to indicate therein. It is more correctly a question of analogy;
one is concerned with the fall into the material and animal state,
while the other signifies destruction on the intellectual side". The
cards are analogous to different conceptions of ruination. The Devil
more correctly typifying the Fall, while the Tower, the destruction of
intellection. Waite held that the life of the mystic was governed by
the practical, concerned specifically with the "conditions, processes,
practices leading to the term in God or it is concerned with the
experience attained in the term." The first step in the intellection
of the experience of union is the attempt on the part of the mystic to
reduce it to language. That language of the esteemed mystic, say,
Jesus of Nazareth, is codified and formalized into Doctrine. In the
worst case, reduced to Official Church Doctrine, constantly degraded
by further intellection, what began in the personal as the direct
experience of God, becomes in the external the stuff of Inquisition
and Crusade. As the spirit is enthralled by its immersion in the
mundane and the "fatality of the material life"(5), the mind is
deluded by its own intellection. The Tower, seen in this sense, is
reflected in the Zoharic Babel experience.
    Before the Fall, God gave Adam a book containing the keys to all
mysteries. The Book of the Generations of Adam, sometimes the Book of
the Wisdom of Adam, was delivered by the angel Raziel- which
inspires the Middle Aged "Book of Raziel"- but lost after expulsion
from Paradise. Through many tears and lamentations, Adam prevails on
God and Raphael returns the book to Adam. The book passed through the
hands of the usual suspects until it gets to Enoch- which inspires a
Middle Aged "Book of Enoch"- disappearing when he is translated.
    The survivors of the deluge have what they believe is the book.
Waite believed, based on his own reading of the Zohar, that it was
actually a second book, the Book of Enos, a magical book corrupted
from the True Doctrine of the first. Inspired/deluded by the power
made available to them in the book, men design to build the Tower and
make war against God, with the goal of preventing any further deluge
like inconveniences. It seems they were unsuccessful.(6) The Book of
the Generations of Adam/The Book of Enoch is a House of Life. Somehow
dominated by evil, meeting its ruination through the intellection of
man(7), it becomes the Book of Enos, a House of False Doctrine. And in
a second display of ruined intellection, man places his confidence in
the False Doctrine and formulates his doomed and preposterous plan.
    "The Tower has been spoken of as the chastisement of pride and the
intellect overwhelmed in the attempt to penetrate the Mystery of God;
but in neither case do these explanations account for the two persons
who are the living sufferers. The one is the literal word made void
and the other its false interpretation." The lower meanings ascribed
to the card betray themselves in that they are incomplete. The higher
understanding accounts for the two figures, the voided word typifying
the ruined House of Life and its false interpretation, the ruined
House of Doctrine. In this sense, Waite's first definition, "ruin in
all its aspects", while accurate, is low and incomplete. The Zoharic
Babel models a higher, more complete understanding of the card.
    It should be noted that the interpretation of the card as 
typified in the Biblical Babel experience explains the two figures as
Nimrod and his minister.(8)
    "In yet a deeper sense, it may signify also the end of a
dispensation, but there is no possibility here for the consideration
of this involved question." Waite is referring to holistic changes
brought about by a Tower experience. Dispensational changes can occur
in the subjective and objective universe, on superficial and
significant levels. As above, so below. This dispensational impact is
not part of the symbolism of the card- the card symbolizes ruin. It is
the fact that it can symbolize the ruin of such important goods and of
such a high order is what makes dispensational impact an issue.
    In the Babel narrative, in a macrocosmic dispensational change,
what light that is left to man is finally extinguished. Judism and
Kabbalism both reflect an intimate connection between thought and
word. Intellection, the manipulation of the letters, is inevitably
linked to action and creation with the speaking of the Word. "Why was
their language confounded? Because they all spoke the holy tongue, and
this was of help to them."(9) The Confusion of Tongues after Babel
is nothing less than the removal of whatever vestiges of the Word
remained with man. The symbol typifying that last remnant of
understanding regarding union and the correct apprehension of God was
that single unifying language.(10)
    Waite describes the subjective holistic change as "a quickening, a
manifestation, an unfoldment of some new quality of conscious life,
which is at once turned to God and derived from Him. It is a new form
of perception, to which a new order of the world and a new spirit
therein reveals itself and unfolds."(11)
    The ritual of the Roman Mass is a collection of parts. There is
the Benediction, the Consecration, the Gospel, etc., and worshipers
follow the ritual in their Mass Book. Waite wrote his own mystical
Mass Book and this is from "The Introit", the meditation at the
beginning of the Mass. Here is a glimpse of the true "rending of the
House of [False] Doctrine". 

          Open Thy gates; behold we open ours!
              We have destroy'd our earthworks, broken down
          All roofs and battlements; our Babel towers
          Are rent to fragments. Give us entrance now
              Within the holy precincts of Thy town!(12)

    The Roman Catholic Church does not countenance formal doctrines of
union, though its mystics have recorded the experience for nearly two
millenia. Official Church Doctrine views man and God as forever
seperate and St. Thomas Aquinas developed and worked to perfect the
concept of the Beatific Vision, a mystical experience of close
approach, what St. Augustine had described long before as "face to
face" with God. Waite held that this close approach merely preceded
the experience of full union and was fond of recounting of Thomas, "I
question whether he entered directly the Great Mystery, unless and
until that day came when Tradition tells us that he said- as ever- his
daily Mass; and somewhere, I think, between Vere Dignum and Agnus Dei
there came upon him an experience of which we know only the fact of a
deep entrancement; and never thereafter- it is said- did he write a
line."(13)
    Waite's implication is that Aquinas abandoned completing his
formidable Summa Theologica because he had enjoyed full union during
that Mass. His Tower, with its voided word of union and its false
interpretation named Beatific Vision, was completely overthrown by the
experience. Faced with the choice between continuing a work that he
knew to be false or being branded by the Church as a heretic, he ended
his writing career.
    In the various Grail cycles the Wounded King lives in distress,
not just from his wounds, but also his wish to pass along the Secret
Words and to see his kingdom relieved of the curse under which it
labors. It is a supremely easy matter, requiring only that the King be
asked an obvious question. Perceval (depending on the cycle) sees the
Grail and its Hallows parade unsupported in the air during the King's
feast, but he does not ask the question. Alas! Perceval dwells in the
House of [False] Doctrine. He has been instructed in the ways of
Chivalry which dictates that the guest does not question the host. The
question remains unasked, the King remains unhealed, the Secret Words
remain unspoken, the land remains in its baleful state. Perceval pays
for his omission with tribulation and hardship, eventually his Babel
is "rent to fragments" and he returns and asks.(14) Perceval's ruined
intellection, corrupted by false doctrine, at first blocks a
dispensational change. But on the ruin of the House of [False]
Doctrine, here again in the sense of Waite's "Inroit", there follows
the completion of the Quest with the asking, and a new dispensation
ensues. The King is healed, the wound of False Doctrine is closed;
the Secret Words are spoken, the fullness of the True Sacrament of God
is active again in the world; the land is restored, the quality of
existence is transformed for all.
    But most of all, "It must be understood that I speak at the moment
of highest election to those most highly called and strangely chosen.
For that great multitude which no man can number of those who are good
and true according to other measures, the Sacred Mystery which Christ
came to communicate has not as yet been published, though fragments of
its Divine Body are found in all languages. I believe that a day will
come when these shall be drawn together, by some great awakening
witness of the Christhood and that Divine Body shall be offered and
received in all the quarters. What Sacred Host on earth shall then
compare therewith? What Mass in all the Rites of Greece or Rome?"(15)
    How to get "all the quarters" to the Perceval like, Inroit Babel
experience he does not say. Perhaps he felt that this particular
dispensational change would require the wide scale adoption of Zoharic
Sexual techniques. "...if those who are prepared thereto within and
without... were to enter the nuptial state and fulfill it
consistently, as also with high reverence, in the sense of the Zohar,
I think that the world might be changed and that a generation to come
born of such unions might be children of a risen life." (16) This
nuptial state contributed to the station of Moses, himself.(17)

    To summarize, in its broadest aspects, the Tower is ruin in
general. In a higher sense, it is the ruin that comes to the holy
in the hands of man and the fate of man under the sway of such folly.
And finally, it suggests the destructive, introspective housecleaning
precipitated by insight into true holiness.

    A short note on the design. In associating the Tower to Ayin,
Eliphas Levi says of the falling figures, "One of them in his fall
represents perfectly the letter <Hebrew character>, ayin."(11) He is
followed by Papus(13). It is does not seem possible that Waite would
not recognize the apparent association in the character on his own
card. The question really is would he care? I do not find any
association made explicitly in his written works. The only reason
Waite seems even to nod in the direction of a systematic association
of letters to cards is because he had his own, wholly unrelated
reasons for associating Shin to the Fool and Beth to the High
Priestess. It seems the "Ayin character" on Waite's card could be
anything from a conscious acknowlegement of Levi's system to a
disregard of the obvious because it simply doesn't matter.

***
 1. A. E. Waite, "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot"; Rider, 1911.

 2. Papus, "The Tarot of the Bohemians"; translated by A. P. Morton.
p. 169.

 3. "A Manual of Cartomancy", by Grand Orient [A. E. Waite] (Rider,
1909). Grand Orient, like several before and after, graded meanings to
three worlds. In the the second, the World of Conformity, he writes
"The Fall, and here especially the fall from Grace; also judgment on
sin; the ruin of the house of life, when evil has prevalled therein;
but the symbolism is that of a Divine act or consequence, and the
power which destroys the Temple of God can rebuild it in three
mystical days."
    The Tarot article from the Manual, "The Book of the Secret Word",
is available at http://adepti.com -misc. writings.

 4. "The History and Practice of Magic", Paul Christian; Citadel,
1963. Vol. 1, p. 107.

 5. PKT, p. 128

 6. "The Secret Doctrine in Isreal"; Rider, 1913. pp. 112-114.

 7. Zohar I, 75b-76a; Soncino, 1984: "He gave the supernal wisdom to
Adam, but Adam utilized the wisdom disclosed to him to familiarize
himself with the lower grades also, until in the end he attached
himself to the yetzer- hara (evil tempter), and the fountains of
wisdom were closed to him. After he repented before his Master, parts
of that wisdom were again revealed to him, in that same book, but
through that same knowledge people came later on to provoke God."

 8. See for example Levi, "Transendental Magic"; Weiser, 1972. p. 391.

 9. Zohar I, 75b; Soncino, 1984.

10. "The Holy Kabbalah"; Williams and Norgate, 1929. p. 296.

11. "A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry", the article "Resurrection
and rebirth", Vol. II, p. 331.

12. "The Collected Poems of A. E. Waite"; Rider, 1914. Vol. 1, p. 321.

13. "The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry"; Rider, 1937. p. 637.

14. "The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal"; Rebman, 1909. pp. 152-157.

15. "The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry"; Rider, 1937. p. 587n1.

16. "The Holy Kabbalah"; Williams and Norgate, 1929. p. 597.

17. ibid. p. 303. See also Zohar II, 11a-11b.

18. "The Mysteries of Magic", 2nd ed.; Kegan Paul, 1897. p. 280. This
cite will appear in all the various "Transendental Magic" volumes
also. I reference the older work, a digest of Levi, rather than the
translation, because I want to mention that unlike the TM, which
has Tarot material scattered throughout, in the MM Waite presents the
material nearly all collected together.

19. "The Tarot of the Bohemians"; Wilshire, 1973. p. 169. "...the
attitude of the former recalls the shape of the letter Ayin." Also
Wirth, "The Tarot of the Magicians"; Weiser, 1985. p. 129. "The
silhouette which he outlines as he falls reminds us of the Ayn..."
This is Wirth's second deck and is later than Waite, but I mention it
as it is an easy comparison.