The House of God

"In old traditions they speak of holy mountains. The Meru mountain in India, Mount Kualua of the taoists, Himalaya, Mountain of The Philosophers, the Rosicrucian mountain, the Kabbalistic mountain. There are many holy mountains. The legend is always the same. Nine immortal men live on top of the mountain. From the highest peak they direct our world. They hold the secret to the conquest of death. They are more than forty-thousand years old. [...] But they were once like ourselves. If others have succeeded in conquering death, why must we accept it? I know where the immortals live and how to obtain their secret.” — The Alchemist, The Holy Mountain

Mount Meru

"Mount Meru, [...] is a mountain often mentioned in the Tipiṭaka and now identified with the 6638 meters high Mt. Kailash in the western Himalayas. The Tibetans call it Khang Rinpoche. The commentary says the mountain is bent inwards ‘like a crow’s beak’ which is a clear reference to its unusual bent pyramid-shaped summit. In ancient Indian geography, Mt. Meru was believed to be the point at which the four continents met, the highest mountain on earth and, according to later cosmology, the place where the gods dwelt." — buddhisma2z.com

"Its summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings as nature made them. It must be unique and it must exist geographically. The door to the invisible must be visible." — Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing

Three styles of pyramid found in Egypt

"Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or 'beside him'] and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.' And he was afraid, and said, 'This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'" — wikipedia

"He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first." (Genesis 28:19)

LUZ - The Hebrew word means "almond tree" or "almond wood". It may also mean "bone," particularly a bone of the spine, and might be applied to a rocky height supposed to resemble a backbone. — classic.net.bible.org

"According to Wallis Budge, the Djed is the oldest symbol of Osiris, and symbolizes his backbone and his body in general. He states that originally Osiris was probably represented by the Djed alone, and that he had no other form. He regards the Djed hieroglyph as a conventional representation of a part of his spinal column and gives its meaning as 'to be stable, to be permanent, abiding, established firmly, enduring.'

"The reconstruction of the body of Osiris occurred at a place called Djedu, in the Delta region of Lower Egypt and it was here that the yearly ceremony of 'Raising the Djed Pillar' took place on the last day of the month of Khoiak, the eve of the agricultural New Year. The next day marked the beginning of the four month long season of Pert, or 'Going Forth' during which the lands rose out of the flood waters allowing the fields to be sown. Djedu was also referred to as Per-Asar-Neb-Djedu, meaning 'The House of Osiris - the Lord of Djedu'. The Greeks called it Busiris, after the shortened title Per-Asar - 'The House of Osiris'" — pyramidofman.com

The angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the meat, provided that the maxis of the axis, and the gravity of the cavity, remain constant.

The Great A'Tuin carrying Discworld

"Hindu mythology also contains a story about the churning of the Cosmic Ocean in order to obtain Amrita - the nectar of immortal life. At the suggestion of Vishnu the gods, (devas) and demons (asuras) churn the primeval ocean in order to obtain Amrita which will guarantee them immortality. To churn the ocean they used the Serpent King, Vasuki, for their churning-string. For a churning pole they use Mount Mandara placed on the back of a Great Tortoise - the Kurma Avatar of Vishnu." — wikipedia

"According to Angkorologist Eleanor Mannikka, [...] the 91 asuras mark the 91 days between the winter solstice and spring equinox in March, while the 88 devas represent the 88 days to the summer solstice after the equinox period. Mannikka says this is just one of the hidden cosmological meanings coded at Angkor Wat, and that the temple is remarkably attuned to the movement of the sun and moon." — veloasia.com

"Thus the orb of heaven turns around like a millstone, and ever does something bad." — Trimalchio in Petronius

"Now it is time to locate the origin of the image of the Mill, and further, what its alleged breakup and the coming into being of the Whirlpool can possibly mean.

"The starting place is Greece. Cleomedes (c. A.D. 150), speaking of the northern latitudes, states: 'The heavens there turn around in the way a millstone does.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"Al-Farghani in the East takes up the same idea, and his colleagues will supply the details. They call the star Kochab, beta Ursae Minoris, 'mill peg,' and the stars of the Little Bear, surrounding the North Pole, and Fas al-rahha (the hole of the mill peg) 'because they represent, as it were, a hole (the axle ring) in which the mill axle turns, since the axle of the equator (the polar axis) is to be found in this region, fairly close to the star Al-jadi (he-goat, Polaris: alpha Ursae Minoris).' — Hamlet's Mill

"The word swastika is Sanskrit: swa means “higher self,” asti means “being,” and ka is a suffix. The word may be understood as “being with higher self.” It is also known as srivatsa." — theepochtimes

"Koth, the common name of the Pole, means really the axle of the movable upper millstone which goes through the lower fixed one, what is called the "mill-iron." The sphere of heaven was imagined as a turning millstone, and the North Pole as the axle bearing in which the mill-iron turns... Farther to the east, in India, the Bhagavata Purana tells us how the virtuous prince Dhruva was appointed as Pole star. See now The Srimad-Bhaga­vatam of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa: 'Just as oxen, fastened to a post fixed in the center of a threshing floor, leaving their own station, go round at shorter, middle or longer distances, similarly fixed on the inside and outside of the circle of time, stars and planets exist, supporting themselves on Dhruva; and propelled by the wind, they range in every direction till the end of a kalpa.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"Thus the image travels far and wide by many channels, reaches the North by way of Celtic-Scandinavian transmission and appears in Snaebjorn's account of his voyage of discovery in the Arctic. The nine grim goddesses who 'once ground Amlodhi's meal,' working now that 'host-cruel skerry quern' beyond the edge of the world, are in their turn only the agents of a shadowy controlling power called Mundilfoeri, literally 'the mover of the handle.' The word mundil, says Rydberg, 'is never used in the old Norse literature about any other object than the sweep or handle with which the movable millstone is turned'. Webster's New International Dictionary lists 'mundle': A stick for stirring. Obsolete except for dialectical use. And he is backed by Vigfusson's dictionary which says that "mundil" in "Mundilfoeri" clearly refers to 'the veering round or revolution of the heavens.'" — Hamlet's Mill

"The case is then established. But there is an ambiguity here which discloses further depths in the idea. "'Moendull' comes from Sanskrit 'Manthati,'" says Rydberg, "it means to swing, twist, bore, which occurs in several passages in the Rigveda. Its direct application always refers to the production of fire by friction." [To term it "friction" is a nice way to shut out dangerous terms: actually, the Sanskrit radical math, manth means drilling in the strict sense, i.e., it involves alternate motion as we have it in the famous Amritamanthana, the Churning of the Milky Ocean, and this very quality of India's churn and fire drill has had far-reaching influence on cosmological conceptions.]." — Hamlet's Mill

Fire making

"So it is, indeed. But Rydberg, after establishing the etymology, has not followed up the meaning. The locomotive engineers and airplane pilots of today who coined the term "joy stick" might have guessed. For the Sanskrit Pramantha is the male fire stick, or churn stick, which serves to make fire. And Pramantha has turned into the Greeks' Prometheus, a personage to whom it will be necessary to come back frequently." — Hamlet's Mill

"The identity of the Mill, in its many versions, with heaven is thus universally understood and accepted. But hitherto nobody seems to have wondered about the second part of the story, which also occurs in the many versions. How and why does it always happen that this Mill, the peg of which is Polaris, had to be wrecked or unhinged? Once the archaic mind had grasped the forever-enduring rotation, what caused it to think that the axle jumps out of the hole? What memory of catastrophic events has created this story of destruction? Why should Vainamoinen (and he is not the only one) state explicitly that another Mill has to be constructed? Why had Dhruva to be appointed to play Pole star--and for a given cycle? For the story refers in no way to the creation of the world. The simple answer lies in the facts of the case. The Pole star does get out of place, and every few thousand years another star has to be chosen which best approximates that position." — Hamlet's Mill

"It is well known that the Great Pyramid, so carefully sighted, is not oriented at our Pole Star but at alpha Draconis, which occupied the position at the pole 5,000 years ago. [There] is quite a collection of myths to show that once upon a time it was realized that the sphere of fixed stars is not meant to circle around the same peg forever and ever. Several myths tell how Polaris is shot down, or removed in some other way." — Hamlet's Mill

"This phenomenon is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, and it was conceived as causing the rise and the cataclysmic fall of ages of the world. Its cause is a bad habit of the axis of our globe, which turns around in the manner of a spinning top, its tip being in the center of our small earth-ball, whence our earth axis, prolonged to the celestial North Pole, describes a circle around the North Pole of the ecliptic, the true "center" of the planetary system, the radius of this circle being of the same magnitude as the obliquity of the ecliptic with respect to the equator: 23 ½ o." — Hamlet's Mill

"The Cube of Space is formed by the three Dragon Axes of the Celestial Sphere , the Ecliptic pole and the Galactic Center-Galactic Anticentre meridian. Equating any pole or axis to the Dragon or Cosmic Serpent makes profound intuitive sense, yet this is further justified when we learn the unmoving Ecliptic Axis points directly at the constellation Draco."  — rundonotwalk.blogspot.com

"The time which this prolonged axis needs to circumscribe the ecliptical North Pole is roughly 26,000 years, during which period it points to one star after another: around 3000 B.C. the Pole star was alpha Draconis; at the time of the Greeks it was beta Ursae Minoris; for the time being it is alpha Ursae Minoris; in A.D. 14,000 it will be Vega. The equinoxes, the points of intersection of ecliptic and equator, swinging from the spinning axis of the earth, move with the same speed of 26,000 years along the ecliptic. The constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (that is, rose heliacally) marked the "place" where the sun rested. At this time it was known as the sun's "carrier," and as the main "pillar" of the sky, the vernal equinox being recognized as the fiducial point of the "system," determining the first degree of the sun's yearly circle, and the first day of the year.

"At Time Zero, the two equinoctial "hinges" of the world had been Gemini and Sagittarius, spanning between them the arch of the Milky Way: both bicorporeal signs--and so were Pisces, and Virgo with her ear of wheat, at the two other corners--to mark the idea that the way (the Milky Way itself) was open between earth and heaven, the way up and the way down, here men and gods could meet in that Golden Age. As will be shown later, the exceptional virtue of the Golden Age was precisely that the crossroads of ecliptic and equator coincided with the crossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy, namely in Gemini and Sagittarius, both constellations "standing" firmly at two of the four corners of the quadrangular earth." — Hamlet's Mill

"It is revealing to look at the figure drawn by a West Sudanese Dogon at the request of Professor Zahan, showing the world egg, with the "inhabited world" between the tropics, "le cylindre ou rectangle du monde." The Dogon are fully aware of the fact that the region between the terrestrial tropics is not the best of inhabitable quarters, and so were their teachers of far-off times, the archaic scientists who coined the terminology of myth. What counted was the zodiacal band between the celestial tropics, delivering the houses, and the inns, the "masks" (prosopa), and the disguises to the much traveling and "shape-shifting" planets." — Hamlet's Mill

Saint John the Evangelist & Saint John the Baptist

"Gemini, as the third sign of the zodiac, these heavenly twins take on the general significance of all symbolic twins (in that they are both divine and mortal, black and white), but Gemini acquire the additional significance of a characteristic phase of the cosmic process as symbolized in the wheel of transformations: the moment in which pure creative forces (Aries and Taurus) is served in two parts, in such a way that one side of dualism is elevated but the other descends into the multiplicity characteristic of phenomena. Marius Shneider has made a profound study of the Gemini-myth in megalithic culture, showing that it has two tendencies, one white; the other black; one creates the other destroys; both these characteristics are indicated by the arms of each of the wins, which in landscape symbolism, are identical to the river of youth and the river of death." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"According to the megalithic conception the mountain of Mars (or Janus) which rises up as a mandorla of the Gemini is the locale of the inversion--the mountain of death and resurrection; the mandorla is another sign of inversion and of interlinking, for it is formed by the intersection of the circle of earth, with the circle of heaven. This mountain has two peaks, and every symbol or sign alludes to this "situation of inversion" is marked by duality or by twin heads." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

Mandorla or vesica piscis

"Janus, a god particular to the Italians, with no corresponding divinities among the Greeks, even the ancients were by no means clear as to his special significance; he was however, regarded as one of the oldest and holiest, and most exalted of the gods. In Rome the king and in in later times the rex sacorum sacrificed to him, at every sacrifice he was the remembered first, at every prayer he was first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. In the songs of Salii, he was called the creator god, and the god of gods, he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things."

"In Zohar; the 'magic head', stands for astral light; in Medieval art it is a symbol of the mind and the spiritual life which explains the frequency in decorative art. Plato asserted in 'Timaeus' that "the human head is the image of the world." In corroboration of this LeBlant points out that the skull, the semi-spherical crown of the human body, signifies the heavens. Clearly the head-symbol here coalesces with that of the sphere as the symbol of oneness.

"Two, three, or four heads are shown in juxtaposition symbolize a corresponding intensification of a given aspect of head symbolism, thus the Gemini, a symbol of the duality of nature, or of the integrating (but not unifying) link between two principles of creation, are represented by beings with two heads or two faces." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"It would appear that Janus was first a god of the light and of the sun, who opened the gates of heaven on going forth in the the morning and closed them on returning at evening. In course of time he became the god of all GOING OUT and COMING IN, to whom all places of entrance and passage, all doors and gates were holy. In Rome all doors and covered passages were suggestive of his name. The former were called 'ianuoe', over the latter, the arches which spanned the streets were called 'iani', a term perhaps symbolic of the vault of heaven. Many of these were expressly dedicated to him, especially those that were situated in markets and frequented streets, or at crossroads. He was generally represented as a porter with a staff and key in his hands and with two bearded faces placed back-to-back and looking in opposite directions. He is also the god of entrance (en-TRANCE) into a new division of time, and was therefore saluted every morning as the god of the breaking day, Janus Pater Matutinus or Janus, "the father/mother protector". Under this name, Janus Pater was also the god of creation." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"This surname JANUS was originally derived from the Hebrew given name YOCJANAN (Jehovah has favoured me with a son), and the name was adopted into the Latin (via Greek) as JOHANNES. This name has enjoyed enormous popularity in Europe, being given in honor of St. John the Baptist, precursor of Christ and of St. John the Evangelist, author of the fourth gospel, as well as others of the nearly one thousand saints of the name." — nowhappened.blogspot.com

"The manned U.S. spacecraft named Jupiter in the film are clearly Gemini vessels, flown between 1965 and 1966 with two astronauts to test various systems and procedures vital to the successor manned space project, Apollo, that would land the first men on the Moon in 1969." — jamesbond.wikia.com, You Only Live Twice.

"In the Gospel of Mark, the "twins" James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are given by Jesus the name of Boanerges, which the Evangelist explains as meaning "Sons of Thunder." This was long overlooked but eventually became the title of a work by a distinguished scholar, too soon forgotten, Rendel Harris. Here the Thunder Twins were shown to exist in cultures as different as Greece, Scandinavia and Peru. They call to mind the roles of Magni and Modi, not actually called twins, but successors of Thor, in Ragnarok. But to quote from Harris:

"We have shown that it does not necessarily follow that when the parenthood of the Thunder is recognised, it necessarily extends to both of the twins. The Dioscuri may be called unitedly, Sons of Zeus; but a closer investigation shows conclusively that there was a tendency in the early Greek cults to regard one twin as of divine parentage, and the other of human. Thus Castor is credited to Tyndareus, Pollux to Zeus. . . The extra child made the trouble, and was credited to an outside source. Only later will the difficulty of discrimination lead to the recognition of both as Sky-boys or Thunder-boys. An instance from a remote civilization will show that this is the right view to take.

"For example, Arriaga, in his "Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru" tells us that "when two children are produced at one birth, which they call Chuchos or Curi, and in el Cuzco Taqui Hua-hua, they hold it for an impious and abominable occurrence, and they say, that one of them is the child of the Lightning, and require a severe penance, as if they had committed a great sin."

"And it is interesting to note that when the Peruvians, of whom Arriaga speaks, became Christians, they replaced the name of Son of Thunder, given to one of the twins, by the name of Santiago, having learnt from their Spanish (missionary) teachers that St. James (Santiago) and St. John had been called Sons of Thunder by our Lord, a phrase which these Peruvian Indians seem to have understood, where the great commentators of the Christian Church had missed the meaning..." — Hamlets Mill

Zeus' thunderbolt

"In mythology Pollux is depicted as a “boxer, one good with his fists”, the picture thus presented being that of the forearm and clenched fist, with the same phallic allusions as were implied in the Services’ term for the penis, “short arm”. It is this same GEShPU, “strong man”, which forms the main part of the New Testament name for the brothers James and John, "Boanerges”. [...] the Greek nickname [...] meaning “mighty man (holding up) the arch of heaven”, a fanciful image of the stem supporting the canopy of the mushroom, seen in cosmographical terms." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

"The clue to its mushroom affinities has lain all along in the “translation” which, as such, is of course quite spurious. But “sons of thunder” is a well-known name for the fungus, found elsewhere in Semitic texts, and supported by the old Greek name keraunion, “thunder—fungus”, after keraunos, “thunder”. The reference is to the belief that mushrooms were born of thunder, the voice of the god in the storm, since it was noticed that they appeared in the ground after rainstorms." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Mushroom & Vajra/Dorje:

"a symbolic ritual object that symbolizes both the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible force)" — wikipedia

"The division of the mushroom volva into two halves gave rise to a “twin” mythology. Since the two constituents of the fungus were envisaged as male and female, it is sometimes personified as a hermaphrodite, and its names like Tubal-Cain, and the Greek Eryngion, contain both male and female elements. Alternatively, the mushroom story presents two figures, usually male, like Castor and Pollux, Cain and Abel, and so on." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

“In the Aztec world, the tau cross is the Tree of Life…”

― Gary Varner, Mysteries of Native American Myth and Religion

“…the cross…was a sacred symbol in practically every religion…Among the Aztecs of ancient Mexico…it was known as the Tree of Life.” ― Jean Delaire, Mystery Teaching in the West, 1935

"The most famous of all the mythological twins are Castor and Pollux, the “volva” and the “stem” of the fungus respectively. Their joint name, Dioscouroi, means “phallus of the storm”, and appears in the New Testament as the name of Jesus’ betrayer, Iscariot, and as the title of Jesus himself, 'son of God.'

"The risen mushroom, with canopy outstretched was seen by the ancients in the same sexual terms as the open groin of a woman penetrated by the male organ, or as an axe-head into which the shaft has been inserted. It was represented symbolically by the form of a cross, as a man or animal carrying a yoke, or as a criminal crucified. So the fungus was known as “the little cross” and its dismemberment as “crucifixion”, giving in part that theme of the Christian myth." — John Allegro, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Winged thunderbolt. — wildwinds.com

"In Islamic legend, Muhammad is reported to have gone on a mysterious night journey into heaven. Islamic sources state this happened "in the spirit," his body remaining behind. The legend also provides teachings on what to expect at the time of death. According to legend, Muhammad states that the ladder on which he ascended to heaven was "that to which the dying man looks when death approaches." — near-death.com

There's no "I" in heaven

"Al-Buraq (Arabic: "lightning") is a mythological steed, described as a creature from the heavens which transported the prophets. The most commonly told story is how in the 7th century, Al-Buraq carried the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and back during the Isra and Mi'raj or "Night Journey", which is the title of one of the chapters (sura), Al-Isra, of the Quran." — wikipedia

Muhammad rides the lightning

"ODIN is a god of the mysterious realms of wisdom, cunning, sorcery, and death. Subtle, aristocratic, and at times inexplicable, Odin is the literal father of important gods, such as Thor, and All-Father to the whole of creation, divine and human. Amongst his gifts to us, his children, was the greatest of all: the gift of writing. To accomplish this Odin hung himself upside down upon the World Tree, the gigantic ash Yggdrasil (a compound meaning "terrible horse"). After nine days of fasting and agony, in which "he made of himself a sacrifice to himself", he "fell screaming" from the tree, having had revealed to him in a flash of insight the secret of the runes." — octavia.net

"Then I was shown Sidrat al-Muntaha (i.e. a tree in the seventh heaven) [...] and four rivers originated at its root, two of them were apparent and two were hidden. I asked [Gabriel] about those rivers and he said, 'The two hidden rivers are in Paradise, and the apparent ones are the Nile and the Euphrates.'" — wikipedia

Four rivers

"'Long oak, broad oak. What is the wood of its root? Gold is the wood of its root. The sky is the wood of the oak's summit. An enclosure within the sky. A wether in the enclosure. A granary on the horn of the wether.' [...] 'the granary upon the top of the cross.'

"More stunning notions occur in a Russian Apocryph where Satanael planted the tree in the paradise intending to get out of it a weapon against Christ: "The branches of the tree spread over the whole paradise, and it also covered the Sun. Its summit touched the sky, and from its roots sprang fountains of milk and honey." — Hamlet's Mill

"The cosmology of Norse mythology has 'nine homeworlds', unified by the world tree Yggdrasill." — wikipedia

"The generally accepted meaning of Old Norse Yggdrasill is "Odin's horse", meaning "gallows". This interpretation comes about because drasill means "horse" and Ygg(r) is one of Odin's many names. The Poetic Edda poem Hávamál describes how Odin sacrificed himself by hanging from a tree, making this tree Odin's gallows. This tree may have been Yggdrasil. Gallows can be called "the horse of the hanged" and therefore Odin's gallows may have developed into the expression "Odin's horse", which then became the name of the tree." ― wikipedia

Dear god can you climb off that tree

Meat into the shape of a 'T'

― GodEatGod, Marilyn Manson

“The gallows from which he is suspended forms a Tau cross…There is a nimbus about the head of the seeming martyr. It should be noted that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death…He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection.” ― A.E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

Ignorance is bliss

"However, other characteristics of the mountain were considered less admirable. Legend said that it gave off a golden light which made all the animals that lived on it, noble and ignoble, appear to be the same. In other words, it lacked discrimination and the ability to distinguish between skilful and unskilful, good and bad, foolishness and wisdom." ― buddhisma2z.com

 

"In the context of Hindu mythology, stambha, also spelt as Skambha, is believed to be a cosmic column. It is believed that the stambha functions as a bond, which joins the heaven and the earth." ― wikipedia

"The sun and moon stood still in their habitation, At the light of thine arrows as they went, At the shining of thy glittering spear." (Habakkuk 3:11)

"Striker, we're going to the tower. Good luck."

"They're going to the tower."

"The tower! The tower! Rapunzel! Rapunzel!"

"Stewardess, how soon till we land?"

"It won't be long now. Try not to worry."— Airplane!

"Early printed decks that preserve all their cards do feature The Tower. In these decks the card bears a number of different names and designs. In some Belgian tarots and the 17th century tarot of Jacques Viéville, the card is called La Foudre or La Fouldre, ("The Lightning") and depicts a tree being struck by lightning." — wikipedia

 "And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow will emerge as the lightning"
(Zechariah 9:14)

"Lightning plays a crucial role in tales dealing with the creation of the world and its preparation for the advent of mankind. In the cosmogony of the Popol Vuh, three Lightning deities identified with the 'Heart of the Sky' (among whom Huraqan 'One-Leg') create the earth out of the primordial sea, and people it with animals." ― wikipedia 

"In the Jewish religion, a blessing '...He who does acts of creation' is to be recited, upon sighting lightning. The Talmud refers to the Hebrew word for the sky, ("Shamaim") – as built from fire and water ("Esh Umaim"), since the sky is the source of the inexplicable mixture of "fire" and water that come together, during rainstorms. This is mentioned in various prayers and discussed in writings of Kabbalah." — wikipedia

"Lightning: Typically the symbol meanings of lightning deal with instant and divine intervention. Lightning is a major message from a higher source, a message for the observer to wake up and pay attention to his/her surroundings. Lightning was viewed as a creative spark to the Native Americans as it signified the winking Thunderbird. Linked with both fire and water, lightning is also viewed as both creator and destroyer in many cultures." ― groupspaces.com

 "May the LORD bless his land with the precious dew from Heaven above and with the deep waters that lie below. (Deuteronomy 33:13) 

"The Minchiate version of the deck may represent Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden." — wikipedia

"In the Tarot of Paris (17th century), the image shown is of the Devil beating his drums, before what appears to be the mouth of Hell; the card still is called La Fouldre." — wikipedia

"In Crowley's card, the tower, attacked by lightning from above, is also assaulted from below by what he calls the mouth of Dis - a god of chaos. The Hebrew letter PE has as its meaning, 'a mouth.'" — bibliotecapleyades

The House of the Devil

"The ritual that would re-animate the deceased was called The Opening of the Mouth ceremony. It was an important ritual in both funerary and in temple practice. The Opening of the Mouth originated as a ritual to endow statues with the capacity to support the living ka, and to receive offerings. It was performed on cult statues of gods, kings, and private individuals, as well as on the mummies of both humans and Apis bulls. It was even performed on the individual rooms of temples and on the entire temple structure. The effect of the ritual was to animate the recipient (or, in the case of a deceased individual, to re-animate it). The ritual allowed the mummy, statue, or temple, to eat, breathe, see, hear and enjoy the offerings and provisions performed by the priests and officiants, thus to sustain the ka." — touregypt.net

Open up and say AUM

"The card of the Tower in the Renaissance has been called by various names: In the Sermones de Ludo appears as "Sagitta" ("Ray"), other authors including Garzoni, the pool, the Pomeran and Theophilus Folengo call it "The Fire". But it was also called "The Devil's Rejects" in Ferrara and "The House of Pluto" or simply "The House" by Aretino. It was still called "The House of the damned", "Hell" and "Heaven." All of these terms are not mutually contradictory, but significant allegory represented, namely the destruction of a house by fire or lightning, according to the cosmological conception of time, were believed to be from the "Sphera Ignis", sphere or circle of fire that towered the earth. Below, going up to the higher heavens, we're placed on the rim of the Moon, the Stars and what followed that of the Sun, the celestial bodies that we find in the Tarot cards after the Tower." — letarot.it (translated)

"The idea that lightning may be of two types, one destructive, the other benefit, already in Pliinio, which divides the stones of lightning in black and red in his "Naturalis Historiae". The black, round, were sacred and were called Bethel, and could be used to conquer peoples and enemy fleets, while red simple stones were called Lightning. In folk tradition, any stone that came from the heavens is termed a Bethel-the term comes from the Hebrew Bethel = House of God." — letarot.it (translated)

 The House of God

"The mountain is a symbol for the athanor, since the perfection of the metals takes place under the guise of Nature within mountains." — Dennis William Hauck, Sorcerer's Stone 

 An Alchemist's Athanor

"The central mountain is everywhere, the hub of universe, the axis munde, where stillness (eternity) and movement (time) meet. The eternal aspect of temporal (temple) experience." — Joseph Campbell

"A soul cannot develop and progress without an appropriate body, because it is the physical body that furnishes the material for its development." — Franz Hartmann (as quoted in Secret Teachings of All Ages)