Introduction

Over the years, when I observed New Year’s Resolutions fall by the wayside for most who make them, including me, I decided to look into it a little deeper. I gave myself a Zen Tarot Reading for the end of winter, just before the Solstice to see what it might reveal. (See reading below)

The reading portrayed winter as our year’s end, and the upcoming spring best for new beginnings. From that time on, Larry and I began in earnest starting our New Year in the spring, and specifically on the second quarter Moon about a week after the Aries New Moon. It has really worked out well for us.

I thought you might like to try this approach this year, starting with a similar reading, and see for yourself how ending your old year, and beginning your New Year in harmony with spring’s new beginnings can make a difference.  This week’s reading is part one on reflecting over this past year, and letting go or “emptying our cup,” so that it may be filled with spring’s new beginnings.

Next week’s blog reading, Part Two, will offer pointers for beginning your natural New Year, which officially begins on the Equinox (March 20). (For further details and for planning, check out our Go With the Flow Astro-Plan-It Calendar here.)

Significator – Travelling

In February, the sap began to rise in the trees, and I’ve heard more than a few health practitioners say that our energy rises within our bodies around this time, too. When this energy rises, if it hits resistance in the liver, for example, triggers of anger can the result, a literal “red flag” to nurture y/our body temple.

This is why so many of us regularly plan liver and other organ cleanses in late winter, early spring, to help clear stale and stuck energies to make way for the creative influences to flow through us and into the world dream. I’m late on my cleanse this year, but starting one soon this coming week. I wonder if you do them, too.

Present – Exhaustion

We stand at the end of a year, many of us exhausted from the relentless stories of the latest news regarding the Shift of the Ages. Interestingly, the United States started it’s Pluto Return the very day Russia and Ukraine started warring, and life has got crazier across many dimensions of our lives every day since. All of this is a part of the alchemy of the times.

There’s still a shorter portion of the Return left to fulfill, but this month, Pluto will dip into Aquarius to give us a peak of what’s next. How perfect that this future snapshot shows up with Spring. In the meantime, the reading also guides us to take care of ourselves and our energy right now. It’s all connected.

Integrator – Compromise

While we have this opportunity to look over the past twelve months today, this card in this position would encourage us to value what is important to us, and to be authentically aligned with our best. It guides us to look over the past year and see where we said “yes,” but felt “no,” or where we may have repressed our wisest thoughts and deepest feelings for something less.

This is not to judge, but to see where we have compromised our values or heartfelt truth for something else. It’s a call to our authentic selves to come forward and create.

The Foundation – Unconscious Power – Courage

This card is so beautiful. Here we are in the midst of the Great Awakening at spring, and we can see ourselves as a flower radiating energy and light is popping up out of a crack in concrete. What a perfect image to reflect the Blossoming of our Selves through hardened repressed traumas that have been jolted awake these past few years.

As painful as it is, moving through this part as it shows up and learning to accept, integrate and love what is, will give us a freedom we’ve only dreamed of up until now. We’re just a stage of going into the darkness and Lighting it and ourselves up from within, and we’re all doing it en masse. It’s our role right now, to discover our inner safety, and to switch on and shine our Light.

The Past – Flowering

We began to flower this past year, to mature. We’ve had three years leading up to and being smack dab in the middle of Pluto’s birth, death and rebirth. It steamrolled into our lives, letting us know it was on the way with Covi and triggering our shadows all based in fear, like no other time in our memory.

This card tells us we have been up to the task given us and are using the experiences to grow in our wisdom and hearts. Something in us knows “Love” is the only solution, and we are about figuring that out and applying what we learn into our community.

Direction — Conscious Mind – Playfulness

We may be exhausted from our long year, but our focus is on playfulness, creative pursuits and climbing out of winter’s dark hibernation and into the Light of day. Finding a focus in movement and joyful endeavors help balance uncomfortable things that we can no longer ignore.

We know spring is on its way. And, with it, a renewed sense of Love, Light and Life.

Near Future – Going With The Flow

This card is one of my favorites! I found out quite by accident that if I looked for “a flow path,” it would reveal itself to me. It was at a Neptune’s Festival in Virginia Beach, and the Boardwalk was filled with a mass of wall-to-wall people. The place was jammin’.

We wondered how we would get the three blocks to a restaurant to meet friends. I looked at the crowd to find an opening and one appeared! We slipped into it, and darn if a whole path through the crowd didn’t open itself to us. We moved quickly through the path to our destination without stopping or bumping into one of the otherwise solid river of people.

There’s always a flow-path and if you seek it, it will show itself to you. Practice makes perfect. We can also trust that we are in the flow whether we can see it or not. Our Divinity/True Self always has our back, and is never out of Balance.

Y/Our Perspective – Politics

This is another mirror of the “Compromise” card described above. It guides us to put all politics aside and get Real with ourselves and each other. We are all looking to feel safe so we can fall into the Love Consciousness that we are.

Authenticity, communications and solutions that work to transcend our problems need to be our focus.

Hope or Fear – Suppression

There is overwhelming evidence that the suppression of our Light today is held in place by repressed traumatic emotional stress rooted in fear and terror. People worldwide are using plant medicines, somatic pain-release therapies, diet and health measures in new ways to dig into these to find relief.

We are incredible creative beings, but haven’t been able to shine due to things in the way, but the Great Awakening is revealing these old skins, beliefs, fears, etc., to us, so we can see them. Only then, do they dissolve and what’s left is our Love, Light and Life.

Guidance Message – Creativity

This card reflects our environment and also guidance from Loving Beings in other Dimensions who are also Divine, and are our brothers and sisters in the truest sense. This message says it plainly. Get creative.

It asks: “If you could contribute, give birth, or otherwise support the Divine Nature in yourself and others with something you truly find meaningful, what would that be?” Perhaps you could take your first step (or your thirtieth) this spring.”

Outcome – Integration

The card, Integration, unites the clarity of our direction with the power within our Heart. This is what happens when we see and let go of the traumatic events, suffering and pain that forced us to wake up to who we really are.

Yes, we’ve made choices and done things we’re not proud of. We’ve also had things seemingly done too us. We’ve judged ourselves and each other in all kinds of shadow dancing. But now, we’re facing all that, and with clarity, humility (flexibility of perspective) and the forgiveness of self and others we will find our way to wholeness once again, individually and together.

Conclusion

This turned out to be quite a full year we’re wrapping up here. It sure was for me when I consider all that unfolded. The reading didn’t mess around, but got beautifully to the point, or at least I thought so. I hope you were served by a Zen Tarot Reading for the end of winter. Inscribe your thoughts in the comments if you like. Thank you. See you next week.

Love at Winter’s Close,
Kaye