A Past-Present-Future Tarot Draw To Bring In the (Astrological) New Year

Beginnings, Endings and Beginnings: We're in the centerpiece year of a transitional decade, will you paint your masterpiece in 2025?

Mar 20, 2025

Happy New Year, everyone!

What follows is, perhaps in the spirit of Aries, a rather quickly thrown-together blog post to honor this occasion. The meat of this post comes after this intro where I share a “past-present-future” Astrological New Year Tarot card draw (I’ll explain the details there).

Now, this post isn’t easy for me to share this for a few reasons. First, if you’ve ever read my work, you can probably surmise based on how long my posts are that I’ve spent much more than one day putting them together, no matter if I’m deep diving into a revolutionary musician’s work, writing about a bike ride journey to convey a hidden aspect of an astrological archetype or, well, anything else I feel like writing about.

A few years back, I remember looking at the AstroFuture astrology app on my iPhone and seeing the following:

Now, while this is true for me—not only do I like reading long novels, I wrote one, too!—-let this be a warning against “cookie-cutter” astrology. After all, Neptune was in Sagittarius for basically all of the 1970s and well into the 1980s but does every person who was born in that era enjoy long novels? If so, I’ve got a book to sell ya!

All jokes aside, I am a person who pours my heart and soul into my work, especially my writing, so to quickly write and share a post is just not something I’m comfortable with. In addition, I earnestly believe that one of the challenges of our times is Information Overload and the last thing I want to do is contribute to that by posting crap. Heck, I even wrote an article about that topic, too!

All that said, I knew that with this historic astrological year beginning, I had to publish something.

So, I wrote several hundred words earlier today before going on a lovely bike ride on which the air still retained the last whispers of winter (an old man who had stopped to take pictures of these same blossoming trees said to me, “The air is very chilly today, isn’t it?” I agreed to be nice, but was thinking, “It’s wonderful, I’m gonna miss it very soon!”).

However, while on my ride, I remembered a few winters ago doing a three-card, past-present-future draw with the classic Tarot deck as the clock turned over on the winter solstice, so I decided I’d do one of those in lieu of a post that would take much longer to write.

Before I finish, though, let me just say a few words about our present moment. If you’re feeling about overwhelmed by the waves of life right now, don’t worry, these are the waters we’re swimming in. After all, not only are we in an eclipse window, we’ve got both Mercury and Venus moving retrograde in early Aries (before moving back into Pisces where they’ll retrieve any spiritual lessons left behind), and a whole bunch of action in late Pisces (Saturn, the North Node of the Moon) and early Aries (the Sun and the two previously mentioned planets).

As the Sun moves further into Aries, those other planets are all going to be meeting just around that powerful point on the Zodiac where the wheel “ends” in Pisces and “begins” in Aries. (“The start of a circle is where you start drawing it from” -w wise words from one of my favorite astrological communicators, Gemini Brett, in this excellent podcast! (His slides are amazing!))

Anyway, for our sake the Pisces-Aries meeting point has a loud-and-clear meaning: endings and beginnings.

It might even feel like you’re cycling along the bike road in this picture below: moving forward only to have to circle back the way you came before you can move forward again. That’s the nature of retrograde planets in general, but when two of them have moved into action-oriented, initiatory Aries only to stop and go back into reflective, mystical Pisces, while being joined by Neptune, Saturn and the North Node of the Moon, well, yeah, don’t be too surprised if that project you were going to get off the ground in March has met some very unexpected delays. (Or if, ahem, a podcast you’ve recorded never sees the light of day!).

Ultimately, this intense period of endings/beginnings here in March is a microcosm of 2025 and the 2020s in general. We really are in the heart of the maelstrom, folks.

Just do your best to surf the currents because the good news is the intensity—and foggy confusion—of this Begin/End/Begin Period will dissipate (some) as we move further into spring. For now, we’ve just got to surrender our need for certainty, admitting, “I don’t know what the heck is happening!” Done right, embracing “I don’t know” can be extremely liberating, as you’ll free up time you were spending trying to make sense of things and that extra time is fertile ground for fresh ideas to emerge.

Ultimately, as we move through 2025, a whole new world will make itself increasingly available to perceive, and, as you’ll see with the Tarot cards I drew, this is not a time to be too small.

Okay, with that all said, again, happy New Year and let’s look at the cards.

A Note About How I Drew The Cards

Without going too far into the details, here are the basics of my draw.

This is a classic “past-present-future” draw in which I drew one card to represent what we, as a collective, can surrender from our past year, what we are invited to embrace this year and what we can hope to manifest starting next year.

I drew these during a 30-minute period when the Sun left Pisces and moved into Aries. There are some interesting details to my process, but I want to finish this post so perhaps I will share them in a future post.

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The Draws: The Past (March 21, 2024-March 20, 2025)

The Magician

The Magician is a card of manifestation, the first card in the deck on the Fool’s Journey, so this suggests that 2024 was as much the start of anything as it was an ending. Those beginnings, though, were of the nature of mental Mercury.

Because I asked what do we need to let go of from last year, it seems this card is inviting us to reflect back on the ideas we generated in 2024-5 and now move beyond that stage of creating the magic in our heads, and move into the more nitty-gritty aspects of manifestation. In other words, you’ve come up with the ideas, now it’s time to do the hard work to bring them into the world.

With Saturn traveling together with Neptune through mystical Pisces over the past year, and with Jupiter having its once-every-12-13-year powwow with Uranus in real world Taurus last April, there was certainly a lot of available energy for the magic makers among us.

Notice: on The Magician’s table, there are emblems of all four minor arcana—pentacles, cups, swords and wands—and this means he is, at heart, an alchemist who is seeking to combine and synthesize energies and make something new.

This make me wonder: Will there be 2024 inventions that we look back on and say, “That all started in 2024?” Or, maybe it’s more that an invention is coming in 2025 or 2026 which was dreamt up by The Magician in 2024?

So, what about you? What dreams did you come up with in 2024 and, after going through that process, how invested are you in them to make them real?

One forgotten aspect of The Magician is that, like a modern scientist, he learns as much by his mistakes as his successes. Thus, maybe there was something you tried to bring forward, but upon reaching this astrological new year, you’ve realized that it wasn’t the right thing for you. However, by doing so, you moved past some illusion or fantasy (Neptune has been in the final section of misty Pisces, after all!) and now are better equipped to actually discover what you really want in 2025.

Consider that perspective if this card didn’t fully resonate with your 2024-5. After all, the question was, “What should we let go of from the past year?”

Onto the present.

The Draws: The Present (March 21, 2025-March 20, 2026)

The Star

With The Star’s association with the sign of Aquarius, and with Pluto spending its first full year in that sign since the late 1700s in 2025, this one is giving a heads up to pay attention to that particular transit. Look at what house Pluto is in in your natal chart and the topics it covers and consider if there are areas in your life that relate to those topics which are under the beginning of a massive renovation.

Now, with this transit taking 20 years, the good news is this work doesn’t need to get done in the next 12 months. However, considering how potent Pluto transits can be, that might not be felt as good news! All I mean to say is, this isn’t a process that will be rushed, so let it flow naturally and be patient with yourself as you go through it.

There may be another perspective, however. While Fixed Air Aquarius is the “slowest” or, more inert of the three air signs, with Uranus moving into Gemini in early summer (and Neptune and Saturn already in fiery Aries), our ability to make what is very deep, big progress quickly is going to increase rapidly.

As someone who has been marveling at how much work I can get done by enlisting the aid of still relatively new AIs such as ChatGPT, I can see how this card is a signal for us to embrace the Aquarian energies and not get left behind.

However …

This comes with two big caveats.

Look at the person in the card. They are fully naked. Do you see any machine parts on them? No, they are a 100-percent organic, Made-on-Planet-Earth human.

In addition, they have one foot in the water, reminding us to keep our hearts open (something that can be challenging for the Aquarian archetype) and one on the Earth, showing that we need to stay grounded and connected to Mother Nature to thrive this year. This won’t be easy, especially with Pluto in the Air sign which represents the “air” of outer space, but none of us incarnated at this time because we liked it easy!

And don’t take this the wrong way: if it’s in your cards to be the first person on Mars, don’t let a little ol’ blogger stop you with his ideas telling you to stay grounded. No, dream big, but just do your best to be heart-centered as you explore the galaxy .. and beyond!

It's time for the final card draw. Let’s peer into the future.

Queen of Cups

Our first non-major arcana, yet it’s still a face card, facing upright.

This one seems rather clear to me, as well. The Queen of Cups represents a powerful, grounded feminine energy. Like The Star, the placement of her feet share something about her meaning. In her case, her feet are both on the earth, one isn’t touching the water, and this indicates that while she’s clearly connected to water, i.e. her emotions, she’s not overwhelmed by them and she stays grounded.

We know that as we enter the second half of the 2020s, with the outer planets moving from the inward-focused feminine signs to the outward-focused masculine ones, one of the challenges of the coming zeitgeist will be to remain heart-centered and grounded.

This Queen is giving us a reminder to do that. But this is a regal perspective, it’s not some person drowning in their feelings, or someone who is showing up extremely emotional. No, this is a person who is in touch with their emotions, and includes them when she is making decisions. In other words, our goal from 2026 into 2027 is to operate from an embodied place of compassion and care.

I think it’s reasonably obvious that a lot of people will struggle with this, especially as we become more and more embroiled with the power of our emerging tech. What this means is that, those who can keep this connection are likely going to stand out, and may even be looked to as leaders.

Unlike a lot of what we’ve been taught, especially us “civilized” men over the past hundreds and thousands of years, there’s true power in remaining heart-centered because, well, people tend to enjoy having leaders who care about them.

Thus, this is not a card (or a draw overall) inviting you to join some sort of secret globalist society with plans to take over and control a world of people you really don’t care about.

No, if that’s where you’re at, perhaps meditate on The Magician and where you went astray, on The Star and how it is a humanitarian by nature and then see if you can bring those heartfelt, empathetic qualities into your life this year so when you get to 2026-7, you can fully embracing the wisdom of the Queen of Cups.

Conclusion

Okay, folks, that’s it. Hopefully, there was something of value in this one for you. But if not, well, you’re still here so I shall honor your perseverance by sharing my favorite photo that I took today.

I just love how much the blue sky, pink flowers and black branches contrast and complement each other. Perhaps there’s even a lesson in there—sometimes the best combination isn’t one we’d naturally think of and may even include elements that don’t seem to fit together at all.

Okay, Happy New Year and we’ll be seeing you around. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

The Archetypal Lens