Starting the New Year with a Tarot draw can be fun, exciting, and frightening. Tarot is a many faceted technique: divination, dream work, soul-making, a portal to active imagination, and guidance. If you haven’t made a New Year draw, it’s not too late. Here’s a simple spread.
Start with an intention. I asked the Tarot to offer some guidance for 2026, especially given the state of world chaos. I drew three cards: Today, tomorrow, and the year. I take tomorrow to be a metaphoric not-literal tomorrow, could be tomorrow or next week, or next month, sometime during the year.
The Today card situates us in the presence and it’s a barometer for tomorrow and the year. The card you draw for Today will reflect what you already know about this moment in time and it will offer some guidance about how to manage the day as you step into tomorrow.
Tomorrow is an anticipatory card. Something will happen and the card you draw will offer some hints about how to deal with what appears sometime during the year. This card may reflect events or experiences that happen more than once. The card could also have to do with a change in feelings or thoughts over several tomorrows.
The card for the Year is your focus image. I carry this card or at least the image of it with me throughout the year. When the chaos comes, I know this image will be standing right next to me, offering guidance and wisdom.
You might be asking” “What if I draw a card I don’t want to be my guide?”
My theory is that you can either do a blind draw. Or you can search through the deck and pick out whatever cards you want. Either way, the results will be the same.
Quick story to prove my point. I was at family gathering over the holidays. One of our family members asked if I do a reading. They had a deck in hand. I told them my theory and they decided to look through the cards and chose the three: today, tomorrow, and the year. During the draw and the reading a few others had gathered around. After the reading they wanted to do a single card draw. I told them my theory. Everyone drew a card randomly without looking at them. The person who had the first reading decided to also draw a card blind. They spread the cards out in front of them, waved their hand over the cards and picked one randomly. They drew the same card they had previously chosen for tomorrow. That got a few gasps from the group.
The cards are alive and they are here to help us navigator our way through life.
Gil Stafford is the author of five books, a spiritual guide, life coach, alchemist of the soul, and practitioner of Tarot. In his former lives, he played professional baseball, was a college baseball coach, a university president, and an Episcopal priest. Life is a pilgrimage and Gil has taken many, including walking Ireland coast-to-coast.
