Row 1: LOOK SOULWARD

Card 1: FOUNDATION: Knight of Cups

Card 2: WHAT TO EXPECT: Ace of Rods, reversed

Card 3: HOW TO APPROACH THE CHANGE: The Fool

Card 4: IF LOVE IS OPENED WITHIN: Queen of Pentacles

Card 5: IF VENGEANCE GETS TWISTED BY FEAR: Eight of Cups

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Row 2: LOOK BENEATH THE SURFACE

Card 6: YEAR LINE BEFORE CHANGE: The Moon

Card 7: YEAR LINE AFTER CHANGE: Two of Pentacles, reversed

Card 8: YOUR NINE CARD: Ace of Swords

Card 9: HOW TO DIVINE-IZE YOUR EXPERIENCE: Knight of Swords

Card 10: LOVE’S REMEMBRANCE: Three of Cups, reversed

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Row 3: LOOK DIFFERENTLY

Card 11: BE AWARE: Page of Swords, reversed

LOOK SOULWARD

Foundation: Knight of Cups

We enter 2018 having left the tangle of last year’s forest of divergent opinion behind us. In hand, we have the essence of what we have distilled from our experience: a precious cup of sensibility that we grip lest it be lost. The matter of moving forward requires keen balance and attention to the manner in which we enter the new field before us. Pay attention to your emotions now. Your feelings will guide you if you are able to keep your thoughts sheltered from the chaos of the past and elevated by trust in the higher dimensions. There’s a piece of blue sky visible from within the growth you experienced last year. Attuned to your heart, purified, leave what was behind you and realize that the way ahead has already been visualized. Part of your natural beingness has already scoped it out and found it clear, even if you can’t discern what’s just ahead yourself. Let your heart be your guide in all things as you enter new territory, and raise your way of thinking. A vast and promising territory lay before you. Listen within, and stay focused in your intuition.

What to Expect: Ace of Rods, reversed

This year, the familiar power structure has been turned on its head. What has been is unraveling and revealing something new. Wisdom manifests from within the experiences clouded by uncertainty. Your work with your shadow is giving you a new vigor, and from having found and distilled your essential self-understanding in confronting what veils your inner light, you emerge renewed. The dark towers that would have been in the forefront of power shrink in the background, impotent and gutted, unable to reach the pinnacle of their shadowy design. Watch as more awaken to the truth of human unconquerability, and as your own awareness bursts forth in unexpected ways. The past may have been full of turbulence and shadows, but the clouds that linger are dissipating as the undeniable light from within awakens and strengthens the foundation of your being. Let the world take note that it cannot dominate what naturally enters its time of primal ascendancy. If you find your actions of putting yourself in gear to be thwarted, or you sense fear creeping from thoughts put in place by an old and darkened edifice of control, tune into your core light. Direct it toward the source of those shadowy thoughts and feel the life within you open and thrive. This is a time when the mind may challenge the base truth of your right to be, but it cannot withstand the directed awareness of the inner divine focused from an expanded experience of life.

How to Approach the Change: The Fool

With your cares cut down to minimum and cast behind your outlook, this year opens a direction that you can enter with an open heart and light-filled mind. What had been has no foundation left to carry it forward. The abrupt end of the road leaves little for you to do but to turn your gaze upward and become more fully, authentically you. Are you balanced in regard to what you hope for and what you have experienced? The winds of change are meeting you this year, and a light fills the horizons of your mind’s potential, and your field of vision. If the road ends, do you stop? When what you have known changes, are you able to yet carry yourself forward, holding the purity of your being as the essence of who you have become? The time is upon you to be ready for change. Be lightweight, unburdened, without pretense or apology. You have become who you are because of what you have experienced. Let that be enough to know, and look higher for the way forward.

If Love Is Opened Within: Queen of Pentacles

The Queen of Pentacles sits in peace amid natural beauty, plenty, and comfort, just as the heart sits in love. When we approach the time to make a choice as to how to respond to change this year, she reminds us that the way to life is through opening the heart. It is possible to find the sweetness of the moment and embrace it with care. Taking this turn leads to the abundance of good living that has heretofore been the stuff of dreams, stuck potentiality, and impermanent attachment to core life energies. We will come to a time, each one, of reckoning the odds that change presents. It’s a gamble to open to love; it brings you face to face with core vulnerabilities. However, it’s the truth of life itself that it continues to reveal itself anew. Rejuvenation within the bounty of a world at peace with itself is the sweetest fruit of opening to love this year.

If Vengeance Gets Twisted by Fear: Eight of Cups

Jaded and disconnected, the one who clings to the fear-based reactions of getting the upper hand in a game destined to end is soon to realize the illusion of discontent. Far from feeling the fullness of a cup of plenty, having drained what has been given in a never-satisfied roulette of twilight and empty promises, he turns too late to find his destination thwarted, blocked, misidentified. The source of awareness is out of reach for the one who pins his hopes on vengeance. The bitter dregs of the heart are no compensation for all the accomplishments of your past. If you have been building arguments and philosophies of vengeance, realize that the longer you spend stacking justifications takes you farther from the true goal. It may feel comfortable to stay in the safe space you’ve created, but the truth that your core being quests for will feel far out of reach, and your journey toward it will be long and uphill.

LOOK BENEATH THE SURFACE

Year Line Before Change: The Moon

What light have you pinned your hopes upon, that have led to disappointment or tears? The raw emotion that has drenched you to the point of dissolving in the reflections of the world yet cradles you. The year past has given many the aftertaste of sorrow, of loss. Have you recognized the light that radiates from within? It is the guide that is sure, no matter the grim facade of oppositional forces that appear on the landscape. The play of opposites eventually leads to the realization of union of all forces within the divinity that night cannot eclipse. For now, stay focused on the inner experience, and allow the light undimmed by world events to bathe you. All that has been is in the final state of dissolution before a new light rises. From where does this light originate? You know it is from within the rising consciousness of a humanity awaiting release in rebirth. Remain in awareness, conscious of inner knowing, and let all else melt away.

Year Line After Change: Two of Pentacles, reversed

What does change bring if not a new perspective? The turbulence that turns the world upside-down is soon forgotten and short lived. What remains is a slowly awakening understanding that the day-to-day realities of worldly affairs requires some attention and a recalibration of balance. New systems may not be immediately easy to grasp, but they will generate a lot of joy in time. While the ship of state is righting itself, find new ways of merging with what is coming to be. Stay ahead of the turmoil that brings a shift, and remember that the shift out of what was is the shift that has been summoned. Let it settle, don’t grab too tightly, and allow the infinite to come into manifest being.

Your Nine Card: Ace of Swords

Nothing is more powerful this year than the ability of your directed thought to pierce the circle of power. Blessed by emanations of the absolute, you find unity in the common and natural inclination to find access to a higher state of mind. If this means directing your thoughts toward the darker places in your world, let it be. Know that you are part of a greater force of consciousness that has arrived at a point of time in its absolute. Realize that the sum of all parts is greater than you can comprehend. Now more than ever are you destined to stand within your truth, for now more than ever is your truth needed. What has been separate must recognize its intrinsic unity. What brings you together within yourself and as a people may come unexpectedly, but it will align you to your essential expression and your higher self. Be ready for a breakthrough, and be aware of the presence of Nine.

How to Divine-ize Your Experience: Knight of Swords

As you grow in wisdom through the experience of living, you come to understand what Nine is. You carry your intrinsic message of being with great energy, yet to bring this into alignment with the divine, you must feel that your mind is fully open. Flowing ideas and brilliant realizations give focus to your voice, while your eyes stay trained on the singular spark of clarity that rises from the point of truth that forms the core of your thought process. Strip away all that is not lending to the purity and sharpness of your mind, yet know that you are under the watchful care of a higher intelligence. Bring the flame of truth down through the shadows that awakened consciousness has pierced. Hold firm in your alignment with essential light. Be present now, and present your truth with the voice of one who has earned the right to speak.

Love’s Remembrance: Three of Cups, reversed

One lesson learned in the journey to awakening is the loss of friends and the separation from loved ones unable or unwilling to venture afield with you as you discover new light. Be that as it may, the core love of friendship and family remains, though its expression may remain unvoiced. In remembering the essence of love as the thing that binds all, separation transmutes into stillness of memory while the lifeblood of connection courses on in the ethers. You have lost nothing, if you can remember love’s tune in the silence of time. The strength of the heart bound in sweet lines of everliving contact gives life to what has moved from experience to memory. In the transformations you undergo in the course of this year, hold on to that common golden truth of hearts in recognition of self in the other. Everything else will sublimate. Treat the memory of lost beloved ones with the respect and honor of the heart held in sacred emotive regard, and greet the mirror-world of eternity with joy in remembrance of love.

LOOK DIFFERENTLY

Be Aware: Page of Swords, reversed

There is nothing you possess when the darkness falls other than the light of understanding you carry within. It guides you through terrain shrouded in clouds and uncertain outlooks of time. You’ve already tested this and found it to be true, if you have reached the point in your journey where you are now considering these words. Now is not the time to rest in that knowing and to test it again. Now is the time, just ahead of you, where all you have learned is about to take you to a new level of mastery of mind. What you have already understood, you own. When you find yourself in unfamiliar or unwelcome territory this year, be aware of what you already have. Be ready to turn and raise your truth into a higher signature of energy. You have graduated; now move into wisdom’s sphere of action. Are you ready to raise your awareness? It seems that’s the only way forward now.