The Simplest New Year Tarot Spread Ever

integration & exploration

This time of year used to be the most active time for me, tarot-wise. In years past I’d complete dozens and dozens of client readings. I’d create elaborate New Year themed tarot spreads and rituals and workbooks. It was fun, until it wasn’t. Maybe someday I’ll be called back to something more intense, but these past couple years I want simplicity.

So that’s what I’m offering today. I’ve concocted what may be the simplest new year tarot spread ever, using only two cards.

Integration and exploration are words we use a lot in relation to tarot, so when I came up with the idea for this spread I thought “surely someone’s already done that.” But Google didn’t find anything, so maybe not?

Anyhow. The spread positions speak for themselves. You have a card to integrate what’s transpired in the past year. Then a card to invite explorations for the coming year.

I’m going to try the spread out for myself and share my insights with you. To add another twist of simplicity, I’ve decided not to use a tarot deck at all, but to do the spread for myself using only my 21-card Spacious Tarot Expansion Pack. I hope you’ll also try the spread for yourself using tarot, oracle, or whatever cards your precious heart desires.

For the integration of 2024 I have Aquarius. Preamble: I’m not an astrologist, and when I use the expansion pack I don’t always interpret the zodiac cards literally. Sometimes I’ll just look at the image and read them more like an oracle card. BUT, in this instance, the astrology does feel relevant.

During 2024, Pluto moved into Aquarius and those more knowledgeable than me say this is a Big Deal. Taking in astrologer Steven Forrest’s thoughts on this transit a few things stand out to me.

Forrest suggests that with this transit, we begin to see possibilities that we could not have seen before. For better or for worse, in my personal life and in broader society, I have in fact already began to see possibilities I couldn’t have seen before.

So as a message of integration, this card invites me to go deeper into that territory. What happened in 2024 that I simply couldn’t have imagined before it happened? How have those events already changed me? How can I continue to adapt and process these huge shifts? This brings up many very specific things for me, but I don’t feel like unravelling them here. That’s to stay between me and my journal ;) but it’s a powerful inquiry.

Forrest also says:

What if everybody is wrong, you included? Let’s remember that if humanity gets this passage right, it will shock us. The answers that are trying to emerge do not exist yet. Nobody has them. Pluto in Aquarius is about creating them.

This harmonizes perfectly with something I’ve already been thinking about as I process 2024. This year I became a lot less interested in arguments. I don’t really have the life force for them anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still find myself getting sucked into them from time to time, but I’m much more aware of the energetic toll that they take.

Aquarius is about big abstract ideas. I’m still interested in sharing my big abstract ideas, but I’m less invested in convincing anyone else to share my perspectives. Maybe this is a bigger shift we can continue to make collectively? We’ll see.

For 2025 exploration I have Air. My initial reaction to seeing this card was THANK GOD! More than ever I am craving, well, basically what the imagery on this card shows. Skies, moons, clouds. Space to think, yes, but also space to just be.

A synchronicity: I’m several years late to the hype, but I’ve finally been reading How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Drawing the Air card for the new year feels in tune with this spirit. It’s nothing new, but I’ve been extra depressed lately about the fact that everything in our world has to be optimized and monetized. Any little way I can find to resist that in 2025 would be a breath of fresh AIR.

In the guidebook that accompanies the expansion pack, I shared the famous Pema Chödrön quote in relation to this card:

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

The weather has very much been all invasive and pervasive during 2024 and I don’t like it. I would very much like to get back to identifying as the sky in 2025. I claim this energy, as they say on TikTok ;)

Well! That’s the small but hopefully useful spread I have to offer for you today. I hope it brings something comforting if you choose to try it for yourself. Let me know.

Blessings,

Carrie