1st: New Year’s Day
6th: Triple Goddess Day, Three King’s Day
13th: Full Wolf Moon in Cancer
14th: Thorrablót
29th: New Moon in Aquarius
Now offering Year Ahead Tarot Readings, with minute insights for each season of the year. Book here.
As we usher in the year 2026, we shift from Hermit energy to Wheel of Fortune energy. The energy, or card of the year, can be calculated by adding up each digit (2 + 0 + 2 + 6 ). Everything we have discovered about ourselves and our path will now be put to the test, subject to the ebb and flow of universal will. This is about co-creation; trusting that if one door closes, another one opens, better and brighter than we could have ever imagined. This year especially, endings reveal they are beginnings. There is an element in the Wheel that is beyond our control, but we can still show up courageously and present ourselves before opportunities to see what happens.
On the first of the year, we are called to remember that all the hope, faith, and energy poured into this day can be accessed any day of the year. Every day, every hour, presents itself as an opportunity to start now. The “New Year, New Me” energy is like the creation of a novel, a macrocosm composed of smaller, more manageable units. A month can be seen as a chapter, the day as a paragraph, the hour as a sentence, the minute as a word, and the second as a letter. The path to fruition begins with planting good seeds and habits, staying consistent, and keeping faith until we see minute shifts transform into tangible results. On the sixth, we have an interesting dichotomy of Triple Goddess Day and Three Kings’ Day–one which acknowledges the cyclical shift of maiden to mother to crone, the other which celebrates birth, hope, and salvation. On the thirteenth, the Full Wolf Moon in Cancer asks us to consider home through the lens of belonging–who in our pack instills safety, confidence, and trust? The fourteenth ushers in Thorrablót, a midwinter festival which honors Thor and other gods in the Icelandic pantheon. Thor is associated with thunder–that which follows the unexpected, i.e. each turn of the Wheel. Finally on the twenty-ninth, we experience a New Moon in Aquarius, in which we can envision greater collective communal healing–the macrocosm that affects, and reflects, our inner turmoil and success.
This month we use an original spread inspired by the structure of a novel, titled “Book Forecast.”
Theme: Reverse Lovers
~Heroes by David Bowie~
We enter the new year and the new month with the struggle presented in the month of December: that of the Reverse Lovers. Perhaps we encountered an uglier side of humanity–within or without. Perhaps we made a choice we weren’t proud of. These crossroad moments don’t have to define us for a lifetime. We can slow down, take these moments into consideration and learn from them. Though we may not have been in full control, we can still integrate after the fact and decide what to integrate. It is our personal narrative, our inner narrator so to speak, that decides whether the event occurred within a comedy or a tragedy, a horror story or a romance novel. We can always pull back and change the genre. We can transform our role from villain or victim to hero–at the least in our own eyes. Spirit is still working to pierce us with the arrow of love, and tilt the scales in our favor, such that the Wheel of Fortune is skewed in our favor in the month ahead.
Start: Reverse Empress
~Love Goddess - Maijah~
There is much fecundity available to us, but we do not see it. Rather than looking at ourselves with rose colored glasses, the Reverse Lovers card skews us towards a negative perspective. We think of all the times we’ve weighed ourselves down, not stood up for our boundaries, acted from an ungrounded space or given up our power. But we could choose to shift our perspective and think about all the times we’ve lifted ourselves up, defended ourselves, made time for creativity, centered ourselves, and shined in our fullest light. Reviewing how far we’ve come can help instill a sense of pride in ourselves and where we are headed, which is ultimately in the direction of love. In truth we have immense generative capacity from which we and all could benefit, and beautiful ideas and visions which we can birth and give light to.
Rising Action: Reverse Justice
~Karma by Taylor Swift~
The theme of Justice, which has repeated since the last two months, returns again in the form of rising action. From the space of the Reverse Empress, of Ishtar underground stripped of all her royal garments, we must rise to the Earth and the land of the living once more. This can only be done when we challenge Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, and present our case, serving as our own defendant in the face of the injustice we have suffered. This injustice is not just personal, but extends into the collective, and the systemic abuses that have been stacked against us. Our souls deserve redemption, not just in her eyes but our own. For it is ourselves we must ultimately win over, ourselves who we must pardon, in order to see ourselves through the eyes of the Lovers once more.
Climax: Six of Cups
~O-o-h Child by The Five Stairsteps~
We reach a developmental climax with the Six of Cups, when we recognize our personal values, and reward them to ourselves as compensation. Injustice, suffering, and a wounded self esteem or self image can be addressed with reparations. We deserve to return to an Edenic child-like state, a state of innocence, love, curiosity, and awe. The world once more becomes a magical web of opportunity and play when we meet our inner child’s needs. Safety, comfort, patient parenting, gentle understanding of our mistakes, emotional soothing, care, and love are things we all need at our core. From here we can develop a secure attachment style, and bravely push the bounds of the imagination, explore our surroundings, expand our social network, and learn new things. This month we encounter a new spiral of human development: a time when our spirit is still learning to crawl, and we celebrate it for each new progress (the metaphorical version of a new tooth, or saying our first word). Time in each stage is precious, and so we don’t want to rush through to the part where we walk or run. Instead we cherish every win, and marvel at the fact that we’ve been given the honor of witnessing every miracle of our growth.
Denouement: Reverse Three of Swords
~no tears left to cry by Ariana Grande~
In our falling action, the balm of the Six of Cups helps us to release the pain experienced with the first three cards of the spread: the Reverse Lovers, Reverse Empress, and Reverse Justice. These are trauma cards that we thought defined us: the tears in our fabric, the gaping holes, the places where we’ve felt worn thin. But we have the ability to patch ourselves up again, to repurpose, or make ourselves anew. As mentioned last month, we are wabi sabi, mending our cracks with brilliant gold that only adds to our worth. Yes we have suffered, but we have not given up or fallen apart–we have persisted, and held onto the beautiful parts of the soul–empathy, kindness, compassion, not just for the other but for ourselves.
End: Eight of Wands
~Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys~
This story concludes with the Eight of Wands, though we know with the Wheel that an end is just a beginning. The Eight of Wands is that propelling force that launches us towards our desires. No longer encumbered by the wounds of the past, restored by the Six of Cups, we fly free, and get to see all that we are and can be. With one arrow, we have the Lovers, with another we have the Empress, with another Justice…all the powerful traits in these cards exist in our arsenal, ready to fire us up and light the way. The arrow may not strike every time–after all we may encounter errant wind or a moving target, but what we discover is that we are an archer, and we can only improve with practice. Thus we have potential to bring an ardent fire into next brief month, and fly on the heels of time.