04 Jan
04Jan

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I’m sure everyone is happy to welcome in a brand new year after the year we just had in 2020. Hopefully, this year will bring us brand new, exciting energy, especially with Saturn and Jupiter leaving Capricorn and entering Aquarius finally! I feel much more optimistic about 2021. I think Aquarius has a lot of innovative, uplifting, and future-forward energy for us. No more being stuck in the past. I feel we are ready to lurch forward into new progressive energy! And that feels good. 

Since it is the New Year, I wanted to dedicate a whole episode to goal setting with the tarot, and I have created a New Years Resolution Tarot Spread for you that I will be sharing in this blog. Hopefully, this blog will be helpful for mapping out this next year for you. I love using the tarot for goal setting, especially at the start of the New Year. My birthday is in mid-January, so I love setting my annual goals on New Year's day to use as New Year Resolutions as well. It all lines up for me at the same time of year.

My 2021 Year Ahead Spread using the Bonestone and Earthflesh Tarot

By this time of the year, I already have my Year Ahead Spread pulled for the next 12 months, so I use that year ahead spread to help narrow down any themes, life lessons, and cycles that I might be encountering or experiencing over the whole year. Then I look at my personal Tarot Card for the upcoming year to see what life lessons I will have to work on mastering over the next year. I covered Year Ahead Spreads and calculating your Personal Tarot Year Cards in the Healing Thru Tarot Podcast Episode 14, so go back and listen to that episode to get caught up if you missed that episode. Link to Podcast Ep 14 click here. I have a companion blog for that episode as well that walks you through that process - click here.

These tools help me map out the next year in my life. When reviewing the past year and setting new goals for the upcoming year, I have certain goals that start to percolate up to the surface that I want to work on, usually related to health or mental health, career/finances, relationships, spirituality, and creative projects. I love to divide the tarot deck up into 3 piles to help me with narrowing down specific goals to work on. When using this divided deck approach, I will make one pile of cards that includes all 22 Major Arcana cards. The Major Arcana cards cover a variety of major life milestones, experiences, life lessons, and cycles we go through on the Fool’s journey thru the tarot.

Light Seers Tarot Major Arcana Cards

Many of these cards help us with our transformation and path alignment along the way. The Major Arcana cards include significant cards like Death, The Devil card, The Magician, The Hierophant, and the Moon, Sun, and Star cards, just to name a few.

The next pile of cards consists of the 40 Minor Arcana, but this does not include the court cards because that will be pile 3. So the 40 minors in pile 2 include each of the 4 elements from Aces through 10. These minor arcana cards cover everyday tasks and experiences and include aces for beginnings and new energy and opportunities, 2's for balance, 5’s representing conflict or change, and 10’s to signify endings of cycles.

The last pile includes the 16 Court Cards. There are 4 court cards per suit. The 4 suits are of course the Cups, Swords, Wands, and Pentacles  So, you will have the Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kings for each suit. These court cards represent people in your life, relationships, or personality characteristics, traits, or roles for yourself. I know for myself that I have several court cards that represent me in the various roles I enact in my life. In some areas, I am the King and Queen and in other areas, I am a Page or a Knight. Each court card has a different personality flavor and energy.

Prisma Visions Tarot Deck Divided Into Majors, Minors and Court Cards

I keep one of my tarot decks divided into these categories to make it quick and easy to use in this manner. This way I don’t have to keep dividing the deck up. I use the Prisma Vision Tarot for this approach - shown above divided into these 3 piles.

Let me walk you through how I use this method. To narrow down which goals I need to work on, I can ask a specific question about major life themes that I need to focus on and then shuffle the Major Arcana pile and pick 1, 2, or 3 cards to work with.

For specific daily actions I need to take or to implement into my regular routine, I will pull cards from the Minor Arcana pile. This could tell me what actions to start taking daily to see improvement on my goals including health, career, or relationships.

To figure out which relationships need work, I pull from the pile of Court Cards. These cards represent the different people in my life. Or if I want to know which personality traits I need to work on for myself, I will also use the court card pile to shuffle and choose a card. Working with the cards in these smaller piles helps to gather specific guidance on the type of action I need to take instead of pulling cards from the full deck.

For example, if I asked about major life themes and used the full 78 card tarot deck and then pulled the 2 of Wands, the message could be a little vague for me. To me, this advice might be saying I need to work on assessing my options for future action and making plans for that foreseeable future before taking action. But that didn’t give me a specific direction to go in. But if I narrowed this down by pulling from the Major Arcana pile that could give me a more specific answer to the question. Let’s say I pulled The Hanged Man card.

Here, I would see this guidance saying to take this moment to assess all my options but to look from a new perspective in order to see things in my environment differently. I could be missing something or going about something in the wrong way and need to readjust my angle before I see the right way forward. Until I see this new angle, I might stay suspended and unable to move forward with my plans. I also would read this as The Hanged Man pointing me specifically to the area of spirituality and enlightenment, which helps narrow down my focus as well.

That’s one example. Now let’s try another scenario. Let’s say I want to know the specific actions I need to take daily to be successful on my new diet goal. So I am looking for advice to implement into my daily routine.

If I pull from the Major Arcana pile and pull the Justice card, I could see this saying I have a decision to make and that I need to seek balance and make good healthy decisions and judgments. But this isn’t very specific in regards to the actions I need to take to be successful with my weight loss goal.

However, if I pull from the Minor Arcana pile, which represents our daily lives, I might pull the 7 of Cups card. Instantly, I know that the advice is to focus on my vices that are tripping me up and sabotaging me on my diet. The 7 of Cups can be about temptations of food, alcohol, sex, greed, gluttony, etc. It can be about overindulgence in unhealthy behaviors that feel good at the moment but are not healthy for long-term health. So, now I see the advice is to make better choices in my daily life and to turn away from those tempting vices of alcohol, sugar, carbs, or anything that is your area of weakness. We all have cravings for different things that we know are not healthy for us. To me, this card helps to give me clearer advice than the Justice Card even though they were similar in addressing making good choices.

So, these examples are to show how this split deck approach could be useful in different ways. Pick the way that works best for you. If you work best with the full deck at all times, then go with what feels right to you. I don’t always work in this way, but when goal setting, I find it particularly helpful because I am looking for specificity in those moments.

Here are a few 3 card spread options you can use when you divide up your tarot deck into these 3 piles.

I put this up on Pinterest if you want to pin this graphic. Pinterest link click here. Experiment and come up with your own 3 questions to ask for these 3 tarot categories. I have found that working with tarot in new ways opens up so many new possibilities for me, and it expands my perspective on the tarot.

When goal-setting, you can do this in many different ways. You can ask the cards which goals need to be prioritized and let the cards paint the picture for you. This is helpful when you are starting from scratch and don’t have any direction yet.

I also flip through my decks to see which cards jump out at me at that moment. I often get inspired by the images on my decks so I set many goals by pulling cards I am drawn to and building a goal list around those cards. In this way, I am using the cards as a springboard to launch ideas.

Also, if I have a specific goal already in mind, I will choose my favorite tarot decks at the moment and find the cards that best represent that goal. I then will use those images while I am intention setting, or I will display them in my environment. These cards act as reminders of my goal and I work off the energy from those particular cards. I meditate on those images throughout the day and even use them as inspiration to write or journal about my goals.

For my goals, I even break them down into 3 areas that can be represented by the 3 piles we discussed earlier today. 

I will choose a card to represent the goal I have in mind.

I will choose a card then to symbolize the energy I need to embody to bring that goal about.

And the last card represents the Action I need to take to bring the goal to fruition.

For example, if I want to master a skill or hone my craft I might choose the King of Pentacles from the Court Cards to represent the goal of mastering a craft as he is a self-made man and master of his domain. He is a hard worker and represents Capricorn, which I associate with the hardest workers in the Zodiac. They are often perfectionists and are extremely ambitious, diligent, and accomplished.

I might choose the Magician from the Majors as the energy I need to embody that will bring that goal about since the Magician represents the creator energy, and he has access to all of the resources in existence including all 4 elements.

And I might choose either the 8 of Pentacles or 3 of Pentacles from the Minors to represent the action to take to bring the goal to fruition. The 8 of Pentacles is the apprentice hard at work learning a new skill and honing that skill over time, and the 3 of Pentacles represents the artisan perfecting his craft as others admire his work.

All of these methods of goal setting I just mentioned use the energy and intention behind these tarot images to help enhance the energy I am directing toward my goal. This raises my vibration and gives me more momentum when striving to achieve the goal I set for the week, month, or year.

Below is the New Year’s Resolution Tarot Spread I created for the New Year. I created this spread with the divided deck approach in mind that I have been covering in this blog. So if you would like to give that method a try, I have listed which piles to pull cards from for each of the prompts in the spread. We will be looking at goals and themes for the upcoming year.

Remember to pull out the 22 Major Arcana cards into 1 pile, the 40 Minor Arcanas ranging from aces to 10’s into pile 2, and the 16 Court Cards into pile 3. If you want to use your full tarot deck for this spread, feel free and just ignore the piles I am referring to. You could also use an oracle deck for this New Year’s spread as well.

I would love to see the photo of your new year spread. Please tag me on Instagram @healingthrutarot and please use the hashtag #healingthrutarotnewyearspread

One of my New Year's resolutions is to grow the Healing Thru Tarot Podcast. So, I would like to ask you a favor. If you are enjoying this podcast please leave a rating and a review. This helps others find me!

Also please let your friends know about this podcast if they are into tarot or if they are interested in learning more about tarot and how to start their journey with tarot. 

Please follow me on Twitter @healingthrutaro. I’m fairly new on Twitter for this account and I’m always looking for like-minded people to follow, and I always post when new podcast episodes drop.

You can find all of my custom tarot spreads and tarot tip sheets on Pinterest under my Healing Thru Tarot account. Click here.

PODCAST

Link to listen to Podcast Episode 15 on Anchor click here

Books and Decks shown in this blog or recommended are below: Some of these are amazon affiliate links and it helps me out if you use these links. Thanks for your support.

Link to Light Seers Tarot mass market deck click here

Rider Waite Smith Tarot Deck click here

Prisma Visions Tarot deck click here

Decks shown in this blog: Bonestone and Earthflesh Tarot, Light Seers Tarot, and Prisma Visions Tarot. The Bonestone is sold out.

Writual Discount Code & Link for You!

Use my Writual ambassador link here along with my discount code HEALING (all caps) to get 15% off your Writual purchases at checkout. Writual has tarot stamps and stickers, dated and undated tarot journals and planners, including one for kids, lunar planners, tarot resources, tarot decks and tarot-themed mugs, candles, and jewelry so check them out using my link and code!

Healing Thru Tarot's Spread Ebook Line

A Spread for All Seasons - 17 custom spreads

Healing and Mental Health Spreads Vol. 1 - 15 custom spreads

Healing and Mental Health Spreads Vol. 2- 15 9-card spreads

Shadow Work Spreads and Workbook - 20 spreads

* (Newest) Healing Thru Tarot’s Life Path and Life Purpose spread ebook includes 15 custom spreads I’ve created to help you identify and align with your life path and sail to success. Spreads like the life path alignment spread, lightwork path guidance spread, conquering obstacles on my path spread, advice from my future self-spread and karmic healing path spread will help you position yourself to step into your full power and achieve the purpose you incarnated to fulfill. Plus many more spreads offering guidance and advice to get on path and stay on track. $12

Click here to purchase any of these spread ebooks

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