Excuse Me While I Read My Tarot - A Reading for the New Year

 

I can’t believe that 2025 has already come and gone. Now it’s time for me to set my intentions for 2026, work out my goals, let go of things that no longer serve me, and draw my annual New Year’s Tarot reading. Since many of you may be getting set up for the new year with your own goal-setting and tarot spread, I thought I would share my process here.

I found this awesome 12-card spread on the blog of Biddy Tarot, one of my favorite tarot instructors on the internet. Rather than a month-by-month breakdown of my year, this one focuses on key lessons, aspirations, and specific life areas, including relationships and emotions, work and finances, health and well-being, and spirituality and fulfillment. I love this because it aligns with my goal-setting. 

I started with a bit of meditation just to clear my head of any stray worries or obligations. It’s always good to have an open mind and heart. I used the Wild Unknown deck by Kim Krans, given to me by a friend. I love this deck for the striking visuals. It’s not so great if you need clues from the artwork to recall the card meanings, though. I also noted that the Strength card (#8 in the traditional tarot deck) and Justice (#11) had their numbers swapped in this deck. I assumed it was a printing error, and since the cards are Major Arcana, the number doesn’t really matter so much as the subject of the card, so I read them that way.

As I turned each card, I jotted down the keywords and meanings, noting any reversals. Because I am not as familiar with this deck and because I have other decks and descriptions I like a lot, I also referred to those. In all, I read the cards four times, noting the meanings from the Wild Unknown deck, Biddy Tarot’s website, the Light Seer’s deck, and the Original Rider Waite: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A. E. Waite. Some of you might be surprised to know that while most of the meanings were the same or similar, there was quite a bit of divergence between them, which is one of the reasons why I like to refer to as many different resources as possible and not just rely on my own memory and/or intuition when reading cards for myself. Sometimes, the meaning just doesn’t fit.

If you’ve been following along on the podcast, you’ll recall that Amber, Christen, and I have been using AI quite a bit lately for various things. I mainly use it to clarify my thoughts and distill them into actionable lists. Since so much information was gathered in this 12-card draw, I decided to share my notes with ChatGPT to see if the results matched my own conclusions. I gave a brief description of myself:

Assume that I am a 61 year old white female, widowed with 3 grown children, a son-in-law, step-granddaughter and several couples who consider me a second mother figure who is a part-time travel agent, podcaster and blogger that loves to craft, what would the following 2026 New Year Tarot reading mean for me? Break it down by each card using the descriptions provided.

I followed this with my complete notes for each card, including all four resources. I was delightfully surprised by the accuracy of the interpretation. ChatGPT even managed to derive several highly relevant points that I completely missed – almost as if I’d had a reading from someone else because it eliminated the natural bias that occurs when reading for yourself or someone you know. 

If you’d like to see my complete notes, I’ve linked them below. You can also view the ChatGPT results. I’m going to keep these two versions together to refer back to throughout the year. I know that Christen has used ChatGPT to help her with her goal-setting for 2026 (hopefully she’ll share that with us!), so I might do the same, adding this tarot read to the prompt for further clarity. 

Let me know what you think! Was ChatGPT spot-on, or way off? Would you use it yourself or would you just go with your own instincts? I’d love to hear about it!

2026 New Year’s Tarot Spread

2026 ChatGPT Interpretation

 

After my husband died, I made a vow to myself to find my self-confidence, to strengthen and listen to my inner voice, and to allow myself to be my authentic self. The problem is that I’m no longer even sure who that is. When someone asks me what I want most out of life, I can’t honestly say. I’ve done plenty of meditations, hoping to discover what lights my fire or what might be my highest calling. Every fall, I start wondering whether I should continue paying my spring travel agency fees for one more year, and I always wind up giving in and doing so because I’m just not sure. I make lists of pros and cons, ask friends, pray about it, and meditate on it. And then, just when I think I’m ready to hang it up, I find an inspiration that makes me want to keep doing it. 

The problem is, I set out to make it something fun to do. It was a way for me to supplement our income a little and afford me the ability to pay for travel and hobbies on my own. I had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and I was tired of having to ask my husband to work my fun into his budget. I felt like I was having to beg. That’s another story for another day, but suffice it to say that I needed something that I could control, and this little work-from-home travel agency thing seemed like the perfect fit. It was never supposed to be a full-time job. 

I started it with a friend. We did the training, came up with our name and logo, built a website, and started booking group cruises for our friends and family. My friend bailed out pretty quickly. I think she figured out that it just didn’t sell itself, and all those friends and family she hoped to sell vacations to were still doing it on their own instead of giving their business to her. 

I worried about it at the time, but I found other people to help me. They weren’t travel agents, but they were craft instructors, and they had access to potential clients I didn’t have on my own. Keeping up with the travel aspect was easy, but creating high-quality workshops and amenities for our groups was a lot of work. I enjoyed coming up with the ideas. The ladies who contracted to help me were skilled and experienced. Unfortunately, some of them were less than diligent about meeting their obligations, and one even turned traitorous, beginning to stir up the other members of the group. It was an ugly situation, and I cried many tears over it before I cut ties with all of them and started over again. For a time, the business was growing, I had a trustworthy group of organizers, and we were running several cruises every year with different groups. Then COVID hit.

I waited a long time after the cruise industry and the American government gave the all-clear to travel again before I started thinking about my travel business. I’ve written numerous articles on this blog about what my family was going through at that time. Eventually, I got up the nerve to try again, and instead of going back to my crafting groups, I decided to try my hand at hosting a metaphysical group. Christen and Amber were on board, and we considered doing a Modern Musings cruise. I partnered with the owner of a local metaphysical store, and we organized a highly successful cruise. In the end, it became his group, not mine. I just completed the travel portion, and he organized all the classes. And since he wanted to do it in the fall, right in the middle of the school year, Amber didn’t even get to go.

Still, it went a long way towards rebuilding my confidence in myself and my business, and the store owner came back to me with a request for a group trip to Paris, which I’ve also mentioned frequently. Along with that, we also planned a cruise to Alaska, but I had a hard time convincing him to focus on promoting both trips simultaneously. I didn’t speak up. In the end, we ran out of time to encourage the Alaskan trip, and it was cancelled. Then the store owner found a different travel agent to handle his next trip, and I have not taken any steps to grow or promote my business since. Instead, I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should just give it up altogether. 

Then, something interesting happened. Remember that inspiration that always hits me right when I’m ready to give up? I attended a conference last fall and was inspired all over again. I’ve had a few brief conversations with a friend about starting up another crafting cruise, and I have an abundance of ideas I’ve been collecting for it, but six months later, I just haven’t been able to make myself commit. Additionally, this conference inspired me to consider organizing a wellness or goal-setting cruise. I was even inspired to consider teaching a class (or two) at the conference next year to attract new customers, podcast listeners, and blog readers. But all of these things would need support – human support. I can’t do it alone. And here, once again, is the fear. What if I can’t get anyone to help me? Or what if they volunteer, but they don’t really help? What if we can’t get enough participants like the Alaskan cruise? What if…. That fear freezes me.

Last fall, on our Living Fearlessly podcast, Christen suggested reframing that “what if” into an “even if,” and I can see how that could work for many things, but I’m not sure how it applies in this case. I suppose that if I try and it fails, that could be an answer to give up, but then I am tormented by what I should do with all that inspiration. Is it the teaching that I’m inspired to do? Or is it the organizing? It comes back again to the indecision of not knowing what I really want. How much of what I desire is governed by fear? If the fear wasn’t there, would I want this or that? If I had no fear, what would I choose? If I knew I could not fail, what would I choose?

That’s the big question, isn’t it? Or is it really, “How can I do it all?” Right now, I have no answers, but I look forward to exploring the options in more detail as the year progresses. 

Stop Telling People They’re Too Much (Or Not Enough)

 

Whenever we do a personality quiz on the podcast, I am never surprised by the results. For that matter, neither are Christen and Amber. I’ve found that the personality topics we’ve covered (Clutter Bug, Enneagram, and this week’s Myers-Briggs) all seem to point to the same thing – I am an Idealist…a Perfectionist…a Reformer, and those assessments would be correct.  I am the type of person who wants to make things “right,” whatever that might mean. I look at the world and somehow see that this or that would be so much better “if only….” Which is not to say that those things aren’t perfectly alright just the way they are. I just happen to see the potential. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?

In June, I wrote “I am What I am…” in an attempt to defend myself against accusations that my natural tendencies are somehow wrong – that my instinct to help others better themselves is not only unwanted, but also somehow offensive, and that I needed to change. Those allegations hurt me, and I spent weeks picking apart my relationships with friends and family to see if I had been overstepping or just offering up what people seemed to want and expect of me. I am, after all, the matriarch of our family, the inferred leader of my peer group, and the “Crone” of the Modern Musings podcast. In my view, there’s a great deal of implied wisdom in those labels, and with wisdom comes the duty to share it liberally.

I’d also like to point out that, for most of my life, other people have brought their problems to me. Whether they are asking for advice or simply want a sympathetic ear, I cannot know for sure, but I have always offered my advice freely, so I must assume people want to hear it, or they wouldn’t share their problems with me in the first place. I am who I am, and they know that is what I do. Besides, what good is a friend who can see the answer or the truth but doesn’t tell you? I treasure the advice that other people give me, even if I don’t follow through on it, mainly because I respect their opinions. I know they have my best interests at heart, but also because their opposing viewpoint allows me to look at the situation from another perspective. Looking at a situation through their eyes might even help me solidify my original view. People give me advice all the time. I can take it or leave it. Why is it so bad if I offer the same?

Another way to approach this conundrum is to consider a few other personality types. If the Perfectionist/Reformer needs to stop trying to reform and perfect things, then should the Enneagram Type 2 Giver stop trying to find ways to be helpful to be liked, or should the Type 3 Achiever stop worrying about their public image and quit trying to impress everyone? What about the Type 7 Enthusiast? If their personality type makes them seek out fun and adventure to avoid emotional pain, then does that mean they should stop having fun and just face their sadness? While the impulse might be to answer “yes,” it’s really not that simple. 

The truth is, people are who they are. Our personalities are shaped by a combination of genetics and life experiences. Our personalities change with time, as demonstrated by the evolution of my Myers-Briggs ENFP result from premarital counseling in 1988 into an ESTJ and the INFJ that I am today. This is especially true of growth-minded individuals who actively work to better themselves and heal trauma. So, while I may currently be a Myers-Briggs Advocate/Idealist, chances are that all my “perfecting” and “advocating” with my friends and family may be one of the ways I work through perfecting and advocating in my own life, and if I continue to face my shadows and dig deep into what makes me tick, I might begin to shift my personality yet again.

Similarly, when the Enneagram’s Giver learns that they don’t have to give everything to be liked, and the Achiever finds that they can be their true, authentic self without losing the respect of others, then they, too, will begin a shift into other personality types. The Enthusiast has but to slow down and face their demons to grow beyond the superficial life of novelty and adventure. It doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy those things anymore, and it doesn’t mean that any of these personalities become anything less – it means they can become something even more.

When we tell people to be less than who they truly are, when we ask people to tone down their tendencies or change themselves to make ourselves feel more comfortable, then we are telling them that they aren’t enough. Or that they are too much. We are saying more about who we are than about anything they are doing. When we offer advice, it should always be to lift someone up and make them more.  We should never ask them to change outright or be less. It’s a fine line, but I’m pretty sure the Advocate-Idealist-Perfectionist-Reformer will be the first one to try. I just hope that recipients can learn to listen to the message, if not the messenger.

Heard it on the Podcast - April 16, 2025

 

 

 

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16-APR-2025

S5E16: Christen's Trainwreck

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