New Year, New Tarot Deck
Polyamorous Pleasures with Strength (2024) and the Hermit (2025), "Letting Go" with Joan Didion's Scare Quotes, and Emily Dickinson's Lantern
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Happy new year! Perhaps you’re considering what you’d like to “let go” of from last year, and what you’d like to cultivate in the new year. I’m going to keep using scare quotes in honor of Joan Didion.
I’m not good at “letting go.” In fact, I find the phrase vague and feel skeptical by the way it’s casually tossed around. Is it just another way to say everything and everyone is disposable in late-late-stage capitalism?
The only way “letting go” makes sense to me is if it’s the physical release of the body during exercise, orgasm, or excretion. Digestion seems the best metaphor: our bodies take what they need from what we eat and “leave the rest.”
It’s harder to apply this to relationships, especially if like me, you lost a parent when you were young. To “let go” of my dad would feel like a betrayal.
In my recent Haunted Muse class, folks were on fire to talk about death. Perhaps because it’s so taboo. We realized together that Western civilization is actually the exception to the rule: we don’t have any ritualized cultural practices of continuing our relationship with the dead.
We are the dead. Our bodies are the bodies of every ancestor who lived and worked for us to be here today.
This is my way of saying: I don’t want to let go of the Strength card. Even as I begin dancing with the Hermit (2025’s card of the year), I want to keep dancing with Strength (2024’s card of the year). We’re in a thrupple, maybe?
While I believe in ethical non-monagamy with the cards, I tend to be somewhat monogamous with decks. I don’t usually work with many decks at once. I prefer instead to work intensely with one deck for a few months, and really get to know it. Then I do somewhat “let go” of it but it’s not forever: I’ll pick up that deck from time to time. Some decks just never click with me, and I really should consider re-homing them but it’s hard to “let go”!
Right now Tarot of the Cat People by Karen Kuykendall has New Relationship Energy. As is my usual practice, I interviewed the deck before beginning to work with it. In the position of “Strengths,” I pulled the Strength card. The Tarot isn’t afraid to be a bit on the nose, or perhaps it was cracking a joke. This honest, raw expressiveness is what I seek while recovering from the cult of academia.
Although the woman is riding the cat, I don’t feel like she’s dominating them. When I learned to ride horses as a kid, I was taught never to use the crop but to direct the horse by gently pressing my foot. Later, in my thirties, I met a man who said he didn’t believe in breaking horses. He rode them into the ocean instead.
In this card, the woman looks warlike but the cat is CUTE! The cat looks like they’re listening to someone but maybe not the woman. Maybe they are cued in to Spirit, the Universe, or Goddess. Then they relay this information to the woman. They are all in a relationship, which is the message of the Strength card.
Since there are cats in every card in this deck, I get to carry Strength with me into the new year.
2025 is the year of the Hermit. That’s because 2 + 2 + 5 = 9. The Hermit is Major Arcana #9.
Like the big cat in the Strength card, it looks like The Hermit is listening to Spirit. The dance partner has changed from a lion or large cat to a lantern. These objects may seem dissimilar but they both represent intuition. The lion is the animal instinct, while the lantern is the still small voice. Both are aspects of the wild soul.
Typically The Hermit is pictured alone but here he has three cat companions. He gets to bring his wild animal instincts along! The lantern lights his way in the dark but as Lindsay Mack says — the lantern only shines a little bit ahead. We may not know the big picture but we can learn to trust our intuition as we take a step in the direction of our dreams.
TAROT TIPS FOR A HOT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR DECK(S)
Approach your deck with respect as you would a new partner. Begin with a conversation with your deck. There are many free resources on interviewing your Tarot deck. Here’s one I use from Little Red Tarot.
Rather than doing predictive readings like “Will this job/relationship/etc. work out?” or even advice readings like “How do I achieve X goal?,” consider developing a non-transactional relationship with your deck based on the pleasure of being together. Some of my favorite open-ended readings can be found at Emerald Lotus Readings under the heading Magick and the Occult.
Work with one deck intensely for a few months, allowing it to reveal itself to you in daily pulls or other open-ended readings. Another spread I love from Emerald Lotus Readings is the Before Bed Spread. This practice invites reflection rather than desperate searching for answers and trying to extract them from your deck.
NEW CLASSES
January
1/12 Awaken Your Inner Word Witch: 8 Week Creative Writing Workshop with Writing Workshops Live on Zoom
1/30 The Carnal Uncanny: The Body and Beyond with Writing Co-Lab Live on Zoom
February
2/10 Word Witch: Exploring the Strange Magic of Embodiment online on Wet Ink
March
3/13 Writing the Weird: 4 Weeks, 4 Uncanny Creations with Writing Workshops Live on Zoom
3/16 The Haunted Muse: Trauma, Memory, Desire and the Art of Ghosts Live on Zoom