I developed this spread a few years ago and wanted to re-share it here. I used Katy Flowers’ New Year Ahead Spread as inspiration, but decided on a simpler approach with just one central card and 4 positions around it. For each position you can use 1-3 cards depending on how you like to read. You can do this reading at various times of year: late in the preceding calendar year, early in the new year, or near your birthday.
Watch me demonstrate this spread in a sample reading.
To do this reading, first pull out the triumphs from your deck and shuffle them*. As you shuffle, ask “what is likely for the next year” or simply “what card represents my upcoming year”. Draw a card but leave it face-down for now in the center of your table. Thoroughly shuffle the other triumphs back into the pack, then draw 4 more cards (or sets of cards) for positions A, B, C, and D. After you have drawn all the cards, lay them out and turn them face up.
Center Card: Your card of the year.
A – Upper left corner: What aspect or energy of the card of the year is likely to be most dominant?
B – Upper right corner: How can I best use this energy?
C – Lower left corner: What obstacle is likely to come up this year?
D – Lower right corner: What advice is there for working with or overcoming this obstacle?
Note: I prefer to choose a card of the year by shuffling rather than calculating a “value” based on the number of the card and a birth or other significant date. Using a calculated number feels too much like using astrology, as those numbers will always appear in the same sequence (i.e. your Chariot year will always follow a Lovers year, etc.) and life generally doesn’t feel that ordered and predictable. Choosing a card of the year by synchronicity feels more accurate, and this has been reflected in the experiences that friends have had when I’ve done readings for them.
COTY: XI Justice
A: II High Priestess
B: Four of Pentacles
C: 0 Fool
D: Knight of Cups
Decks shown: The Crystal (Glass) Tarot by Elisabetta Trevisan; Mara Lunne Tarot by L.S. Grainne, aka Clary Moon Sage
This is so good! I was recently inspired to see the Papesse as a radical foil to convention and that came to mind when I saw your 2025 reading. To me, it says it’s a year we’re inspired to be seek justice in the world by promoting and working for new paradigms, which we can do by building new, stable frameworks with others. We might be held back by not knowing how to do that since we’re socialized to be individualistic, but we can overcome that with a willingness to learn by connecting with others.
Wow, thank you for this great collective reading of my COTY! I love your read on the High Priestess / Papesse in this and other contexts as a radical foil to convention. For me she can also represent non-verbal communication. Blended together these two make for some interesting pondering.