I take no credit, the cards were designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. The Fool is from the the stock gallery of

(simply the best)
All I did was scan the tarot cards at hi-rez, to capture the amazing detail and then convert it into a format small enough to use as a texture map. Then I arranged 12 2 sided panels and placed a different card on each panel, built a metal frame to make the different sections of each pillar, and stacked them 12 high. Then I made the base and cap, which took hours to convert text charectures into 3D meshes and all. all the3 staging blablablablabla
Btw, this is a fecking amazing pic...