Workings for the New Year: A New Year’s Cartomancy Spread
For many practitioners of magic, rituals for guidance, self-improvement, and clarity are something of a New Year’s tradition. Witches and other magical practitioners often use rituals, spells, and other traditions to clear away the negativity the old year and ring in the new. One example of such a tradition is the common practice of using divination to help map out and navigate their plans for the new year.
Many of us set goals at this time of year. It’s almost impossible to avoid doing so. The New Year is always a time of hope and energy that has the potential to be harnessed to create incredible changes in our lives, relationships, and plans. Practicing divination to help plan for the new year is an excellent practice because it helps empower us to see potential obstacles in our paths and get together a plan for circumnavigating them. It helps us to be prepared for the worst and to look forward to the best.
A Reading for the New Year
This cartomancy spread is a simple spread that can be used with any cards you like to read with, at any time of year. Although it is designed to read for the year to follow, it can easily be used to read for any period of time, any new goal, or any upcoming change.
Cards 1 to 3: These cards represent joys to come in the year ahead. They detail three things that you can look forward to celebrating, whether they are new relationships, opportunities, or successes.
Cards 4 to 6: These cards focus on the opposite end of the spectrum, detailing sorrows to come. You may find that they indicate large sorrows (such as deaths, breakups, or job loss). Or they might provide insight on smaller sorrows (such as failures and missteps) or brushes with sorrow (things that could be remedied if handled in the right way).
Cards 7 to 9: These cards detail three events that you can expect to happen in the coming year. They might provide more detail about the joys and sorrows that appear in the reading, or they may predict new events entirely.
Cards 10 to 13: These card detail pieces of advice from various spiritual sources. The reading is designed to include advice from your ancestors (Card 10), advice from your spirit guides (Card 11), advice from the Divine (Card 12), and advice from within (Card 12). If you prefer, you can change any or all of these to read messages from other spiritual forces (ex. your own deities, parts of your spiritual self, etc.,).
Disclaimer: Each of the Crowsbone writers and guest bloggers has their own magical background, beliefs, traditions and practices. These post represent the opinions, research and beliefs of the individual writers. We do not believe that they represent beliefs and rules associated with all magical practice or witchcraft; nor do they represent the beliefs and opinions of all of the Crowsbone community.