This Christmas, I have given myself a gift.

Of a day and two nights, all to myself. Opted out of part of the annual trip around the country to visit family – Emma has gone to see her dad in Lincolnshire, and I am home alone. Tomorrow, it’s Christmas eve and I will take the train to my parents’. Today is all mine.

It’s 8am. I do have a to-do list, tasks I’d love to tick off before relaxing into a week of celebration. But first – a tarot reading to explore themes for the forthcoming year.

It is midwinter. The trees are bare, there is little green among the greys and the browns.

There are seeds, hidden, unseen, in the cold, damp earth.

Seeds that, while all around appears dead or still, are very much alive, preparing, awaiting. Seeds I will incubate in January and February, seeds that may sprout in spring.

I thought back over this year, this year so full of realisations and change, so full of shifts on every level of my being.

I reach for the Wanderer’s Tarot, its darkness and simple, scratched-out images, fine lines in white on deepest black feel so apt for this moment of feeling in the darkness, discerning through intuition what may be lying there, silently, in the cold cold ground.

The spread:
1. Centre | My key theme for the year ahead.
2 & 3. Left & Right | Messages to support and nurture my theme.

1. Ace of Stones

Embodiment and desire.

A homecoming. A return, to what is simple, foundational, truly needed.

Strip away complications. What is left? Only desire. Only this moment, my self, my body, the space I occupy in this world.

In 2018, I learned to tune in to my body. I learned that my body knows what is needed, what is wanted, and that it can tell me, if I will only quiet my chattering, insecure brain long enough to hear it.

In the coming year, I intend to embody this new understanding. Yes, I have learned this thing, but I am so far from truly living it, truly embodying it.

This Ace of Stones, this first of earth, is simple, peaceful. An ace, it is an opportunity, a gift, a moment to start over, to begin a new journey. I will take this simple stone as my symbol and hold it lightly in my pocket, feeling its edges, rough and smooth, its qualities of ancientness and stillness. We are all we have.

Goddess of Moons

Be in the mystery.

The Goddess of Moons finds herself over and over in the mystery of living, in the unfathomable depths and breadths of life, in this moment, in this moment between milennia past and infinite, unknowable future.

The Goddess of Moons sits in silence, listening, feeling. Simply witnessing.

A cup – tea, wine, whiskey, or water. Water flows, shape-shifts, finds its way to the sea no matter how we wish to contain it, for power or profit. Water moves on. It rises to the sky in steam, it falls in rain, it freezes and releases in cycle with the seasons. Its tides move like a blanket up and over the land, then fall away, in cycle with the ever-shifting moon.

Candles to honour the moment, to bring the light of inner wisdom into the darkness of this mystery.

The Goddess of Moons is in the flow, and yet she is grounded. One hand reaches back, planted lovingly on that single rock, the Ace of Stones, a source of support, of nourishment. A reminder that however swirling and chaotic and unpredictable this realm of feelings may be, always, always, we come from the earth, and we return to the earth, over and over.

And what of that great rock in the sky, the moon, its constant cycles? This Goddess of Moons links that great stone to the stone of this planet. There is a space of grounding and support between the two. I am here, and I will always be here, no matter where I go.

Philosopher of Feathers

Living is learning.

A student of my own passion and desire, a learner of the power of my own will, as the Philosopher of Feathers I step forward into the mystery. I am aware of the huge and beautiful feathers that make up my arms, that can lift me, shape my path,

Wings, feathers, that make a song with the uncontrollable wind.

Wings that can help me chart my path.

My desire, my passion, this is my compass.

The Philosopher of Feathers steps from a rock in the flowing river onto land – but the land is dark, mysterious, unknown. It is not stepping to safety, but simply from one state of being into the next. Embracing the mystery, as the Goddess of Moons, I step forwards.

It is okay to know nothing. Nothing but the potential of these feathers, these wings. Nothing but the sense that my body knows what I need, and these wings of desire are tools for the journey ahead, a rudder in the ocean, a star-map, a wheel for steering as best I can.

I am embracing this unknown, this unknowableness of being.

Your life is your life’s work
– adrienne maree brown

Embodiment, ever returning to earth, to my body and its wisdom
Mystery, sitting still and silent in the unknown and unknowable
Desire, exploration of the potential within my passion

These are the themes of my year ahead.