Here we are at the end of the year, where we look back on the past months and begin to think towards the new year to come! 2018 is going to be a Big One, where we really start to work towards finding personal balance after a couple of years of major challenges and realizations that have been pushing us to the point we are at Right Now: standing at the doorways of something totally new and terribly exciting. That’s some conscious word choice: this will be a year of allowing what’s not working to fall away without unnecessary struggle, of seeking justice through right action, and of measuring our actions against our hearts and finding useful answers in between.

I’ve been thinking over my own resolutions for the past few years, and am amazed at how far they’ve come, what as shifted in terms of my personal goals. For me, 2016 was about the 2 of Cups, 9 of Pentacles, and The World: I wanted to recognize the love in my life while also loving and providing for myself, and through that finding the balance needed to “step through the final veil” into a new cycle, which brought me to my main goal for 2017: the 6 of Wands, wanting to be recognized for my efforts in sharing my passion with others. I’ve been considering my goals for 2018 carefully, knowing it’s going to be a truly transformational year, and have consciously chosen my “cards for the year” to be the 2 of Pentacles, maintaining work-life balance, the 9 of Cups, emotional satisfaction, and XIV – Temperance, more balance through finding patience and calm within. These are majorly abbreviated meanings for those cards and my reasons for choosing them are super-deep, but I’m excited to have already started trying to live by my vision for what these resolutions mean to me!

To support my resolutions I laid out a crystal grid of my usual desert rose, selenite wand, and amethyst cluster for clearing of energy and anxiety and for Higher Self connection, nuumite for deep and powerful healing, a little turquoise Kali statue to help me recognize and communicate where changes need to be made, another amethyst to help me think clearly from a place of intuition, apatite to further help me communicate what I need to feel empowered in my life, lepidolite for further soothing of my anxious patterns, red phantom quartz for breaking negative habits, agatized coral to help me flow with my personal patterns and find strength in the ones that do help me grow, and turritella agate to ground myself through working on those patterns and releasing myself from the ones that are “poisoning” my life.

Together, these three cards will require me to be honest with myself about how much I can handle, and whether what I’m choosing to “handle” is even worth handling. If it throws me off balance, maybe it’s not worth it! For example, I’ve been trying to reevaluate how to do my blog posts because I’ve gotten kind of bored with the moon phase posts — this is my cue to be honest with myself and change my format so I feel more satisfied with the work I’m putting out. Yay! Admitting that to myself helped me calm down, release the guilt I was feeling for getting behind, and in turn inspired me for the new direction I want to take with posting — a “back to basics” card-of-the day style, visiting with each of my decks for the first month or so of the year. I feel good about it and feel one-card posts will be a more manageable use of my precious blogging time ❤

Consciously choosing these cards was an interesting exercise for me — I used to marvel at people who did it as opposed to “choosing blind” from the deck. But lately I feel like I can “guess” the cards in spreads before I turn them over, to really cool effect — it feels like “levelling up” in a video game!

It’s neat to notice that the two minor cards add up to 11/2, which is the number vibration of the year ahead, and then with Temperance it adds up to 25, or 7, which is my Birth number — this will be a year where I settle on my personal “will” and find the drive to persevere in my efforts!

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Feel free to leave a comment!

If you’re interested in a reading with me, head over to my Etsy shop! I’m currently offering a special on my 15-card Year Ahead reading: enter the coupon code NEWYEAR2018 for $15 off an $80 reading at checkout.

Deck used:

Tarot Mucha. LWB: Lunaea Weatherstone. Artwork: Giulia F. Massaglia. Torino, Italy: Lo Scarabeo, 2014. © Lo Scarabeo Italy.