Dismantling The Tower (From an Actual Tower)

Tarot is everywhere if you’re looking for it. And me being me, I always am.

Which is why, despite being on holiday in one of my favourite cities, Seville, where I was making every effort to ‘unplug’, I couldn’t help but… make it tarot.

Seville is full of history and character, and so while I was there, like many other tourists, I went to the top of La Giralda, the bell tower attached to La Catedral de Sevilla (the largest gothic cathedral in the world) to see the striking views of the city. To get to the top, you have to walk a winding slope that wraps all the way around the internal walls of the tower - over 35 floors of dark, narrow hallway. Upon entering the tower, though, the total number of floors is unclear. Certainly, judging by the height of the building, there are going to be many floors. But with the gently sloping, dimly-lit path that you’re walking, it’s hard to tell when you reach floor 15 whether there’s a total of 20 or 50.

All of this was a bit disorienting.

And so, as we climbed the floors of the tower, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Seville was approaching 40 degrees. The narrow hall was hot and full of people. I had little concept of where we were, other than, from the occasional window we passed, that we were very high up. It felt claustrophobic and stifling.

Naturally, my mind wandered to The Tower card…