A Resplendent Arrival to the New Year

Hello lovely readers, we’re back in the tarot saddle! How has 2025 been treating you so far? I’m emerging, breathless, from several delightful, enervating, and busy weeks full of work, gathering, and semi-comical bouts of sickness. (Did you know you can get two viruses at the same time?? Me neither!)

While I love a moment to reflect like any other person, I’ve always found New Years to be a little much. You mean we’re supposed to bring our mindful attention towards the future in the dead of winter? Just after a bout of family holidays? Let’s just say my mind was spry and responsive during this time.

Now, however, I’m feeling more thoughtful, aware. Sitting in my new office - a half-finished outbuilding on my property - I’m looking out at a new view, softened by today’s rainy grey weather. My fingers are cold since the heat gave out, but I’m not about to give up on the surprising focus this new space has given me (I wrote and recorded all the year ahead readings for 2025 in here with a shocking amount of focus, very Eight of Pentacles style). Turning our cards over, I’m met with a feeling of joy and satisfaction; this week is a time for us all to emerge on the stage of the new year - alert, fulfilled, and ready to build anew.

We begin the week with the final card of the Major Arcana, The World. I’m not even going to try to be subtle here - this is incredibly exciting! And it’s also tapping into the resolution-fatigue I was alluding to in the beginning of this reading: The World is also known as “The World Dancer,” and as such represents the fluid authenticity of movement. When you know how to dance, when you’re feeling the music and yourself and truly in the moment, you’re not thinking, analyzing, or planning your next step methodically. You’re simply dancing.

In this way, we’re entering into 2025 in a space of joyful presence. What feels full of ease and celebration right now? Where are you dancing with expertise, making what’s difficult feel and look effortless? What movements that once felt challenging and awkward are now a place for you to express yourself with fluency?

Because it’s the last card in The Fool’s journey, The World asks us to see how we’ve reached a conclusion in some area of our life. As the word major suggests, this conclusion is impactful, but the key to identifying it (if it’s hard to pinpoint - it may be extremely obvious!) is not in struggle or exhaustion, but in ease. Where do you feel a breakthrough that’s given you a new perspective? A more fulfilling and intimate relationship with yourself and/or others?

Zooming out, this is a week to enjoy the gifts of your life wherever you see them. Be expressive, look to far-off horizons with excitement, but above all lavish loving attention to the parts of your life that sustain and support you.

As opportunity and ease start to unfurl under The World, a sneakier energy comes into play as the Seven of Swords shows a pushback to all this goodness. Be alert for where you or other people try to poke holes in the beauty that’s apparent. Swords are all about analysis, so I’m sensing this could be in the vein of explaining away happiness, “well actually” statements, and an overall energy of cynicism or “I’m just being practical” arriving to spoil the party.

When I look at the Seven of Swords, however, I can’t help but feel a tender affection rise up. After all, how can this card compare to the gorgeous vista of The World? It’s likely that tempering this curmudgeonly energy - laughing lovingly at it, walking away with grace, not letting it infiltrate the burgeoning sense of possibility this week has to offer - won’t be difficult. Swords, too, are all about knowledge. See how you can bring vivacious curiosity to messages that urge you to turn away from what’s growing naturally and making you feel good. Is there something hiding behind the immediately obvious that needs tending to?

Giving your swords self an outlet could also be helpful, so rather than criticizing the beauty and potential of the moment, let your brain go off on some fun quests. Read something engaging (the stranger the better) or research possibilities that could open your world.

The sevens also represent a moment of pause where we need to have faith that things will work out. This can show up in a lull in our daily lives or mental/spiritual experience. The World is about being, not thinking or doing, so just knowing that this week isn’t about rushing to fulfill our resolutions full-time or launch a bevy of new projects, can help ease some tension. If our world has just opened up, it’s time to celebrate and take it all in, not explain, plan, of “what if” it all away.

I love the body language in this tableau. We see the person in the Seven of Swords running towards The World, swords in arms, as if going to puncture that beautiful picture with thoughts, fears, and interpretations. Yet they’re looking over their shoulder at the Four of Wands as if they’re yearning to go there instead. This is the course correction we should take this week; moving away from criticism and towards the freedom and opportunity we’re building.

I don’t think we’ve had the Four of Wands in a reading for quite some time. This is a card I often think of when envisioning how I want to feel in my life. The fours touch on themes of structure and stability, and in the wands suit the four manifests in openness, flexibility, and freedom. Structure doesn’t have to be oppressive, stodgy, and limiting. Instead, it can be celebratory, communal, and a place for opportunities to blossom.

Where is this energy appearing in your life? This week gives us a beautiful chance to identify and gather within the places where we can grow freely in 2025. Look for the people who are joining you there and where you’re being called to stretch you concept of what makes your life a stable foundation from which you can build. It’s likely that this week is giving us some tantalizing hints at what’s possible that threaten - thankfully, but not without some personal difficulty - suffocating ideas of how we “should” be. Give yourself time to explore it all while tending to any backlash in the wily, avoidant Seven of Swords part of yourself. The world is opening up - see what is has to show you.