Tape 172: The Year In Tarot
I knew it would happen. Since revealing my 12 Days Of Christmas Tarot Spread To Predict The 12 Months Of The Year Ahead last week, I have been inundated with replies asking me to reveal more about it, and shed some light on exactly what it revealed to me about 2025.
“Really?”
Yes, I think so. Why, what does inundated mean?
“It means you received loads of loads of questions about it.”
Oh. Right. Well anyway, this week I’m talking about that.
“Did anyone actually ask you to write about this or are you just going through a big Tarot phase at the moment and you want to annoy people about it?”
Be quiet. Who are you, I noticed you started chipping in last week?
“I’m your imagined reader.”
Right. You’d think I’d make you more kind.
“Well that’s for you to think about.”
Cool. Well anyway, like I said. Over Christmas a few of us took a card each day to correspond to a month of the year, and so far January and February have played out in ways that are eerily reminiscent of what the cards foretold. So, as a sort of accountability tool for the year ahead to help me look back and see what each one ended up meaning, here is the rest of my spread and what I think each one will mean:
- JANUARY – PAGE OF PENTACLES
The Page of Pentacles portends the beginning of a new journey, one that is all about the material world – money, possessions, wealth, tangible things. He is often therefore seen as being a messenger heralding a new business venture. Is it any coincidence, then, that in January I did some work on some projects? No, it is not. It is exactly as the cards foretold.
- FEBRUARY – THE HANGED MAN
I talked about this last week – the Hanged Man is all about looking at things from a new perspective during a period of transition and change. Is it any coincidence, then, that in February I am doing some work on my show in order to put on some work-in-progress performances, and so are several other people I’m working with? No. It is all happening exactly as the cards foretold.
- MARCH – PAGE OF SWORDS
I’ll be honest, I found this one kind of annoying because I don’t really like the Pages. They basically mean “You’re going on a journey and you’re very young and naive and not ready for the things the journey will teach you.” I don’t mind getting one of those, but two in close proximity feels a bit personal. At least it’s a different journey – swords are all about thoughts and ideas, so I guess that means that in March I’m going to start thinking about some stuff. And do you know what, I really think I will??
- APRIL – TEN OF SWORDS
I knew I was right to be suspicious of that Page of Swords – this is what happens when you start thinking about things. This is the worst card in the deck, in case you couldn’t tell from the picture of a dead man with ten swords sticking out of his back. It represents total and utter failure, catastrophic failure, reached as a result of accumulating too much Big Sword energy (too much thinking). I’ve just checked and realised I have absolutely nothing planned in April, which is a worry, because clearly anything I do plan now has a high chance of going completely wrong. Great. I’ll have to spend April hiding in my flat and refusing to leave. So glad I started doing this spread, it’s so encouraging.
- MAY – TWO OF WANDS
Ok, back on track after my total failure in April. Wands are about creativity, and the two represents making a plan – it’s about knowing what you want, and then looking ahead to decide what you need to do in order to achieve it. Is it any coincidence that in May it is my birthday? And that I want to celebrate that birthday, but in order to do so I will have to make a plan? No, it is not.
- JUNE – TWO OF WANDS AGAIN
What the hell? I just did this. I planned my birthday party, remember? This was the third card out of six to actively annoy me when I drew it, because it implies I spend the entirety of May ignoring whatever the cards wanted me to think about, so that I have to do it again properly in June. Maybe it’s not about my birthday. Maybe it’s about…I dunno…Edinburgh or something? I guess I should be planning that at some point. I was doing quite well on working on my show in January and February, until I got distracted by thinking and then having a big failure and then my birthday. Back to it, I guess.
- JULY – JUSTICE
Justice is all about accounting for your actions, apparently. If you have acted in accordance with your higher self, you have nothing to fear. If you haven’t then you’ll be called out and made to account for what you’ve done. What does that sound like? Sounds like critics sharpening their pens for the Edinburgh Fringe to me. The next card represents August, so my Edinburgh Fringe experience itself will be defined by:
- AUGUST – THE DEVIL
This was the first card draw to actively make me laugh out loud. The Devil represents self-limiting beliefs, bad habits and negative patterns of thought. For August? In the year I go back to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in 3 years? You reckon?
- SEPTEMBER – DEATH
Oh, and then I die in September. Great. Fantastic. Only joking – as anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with Tarot knows, Death doesn’t actually mean death – it means change, the death of one thing and the birth of another. I can only take this to mean that Edinburgh goes so well that my old self dies in the fires of my final performance, and something new and beautiful is born out of my ashes. This new self will go on to:
- OCTOBER – THE SIX OF CUPS
…play around in a garden? Ok. There are worse things to do immediately after a spiritual rebirth, I guess. This card is apparently all about nostalgia, childhood innocence and playfulness. Maybe a figure from my past appears? I hope they still recognise me after I died and got reborn in September! Anyway, looks like I spend this month just having a nice time pratting around or something. Maybe it’s a holiday? Although we were thinking of going on holiday in September. I dunno, this one’s a bit of a mystery to me.
- NOVEMBER – THE FIVE OF PENTACLES
This is my least favourite card in the deck. I hate it. It represents poverty, hardship, isolation, feeling excluded and left out. Clearly all that nostalgic playing around in October wins me few friends. When I drew this one I got really upset and said the whole thing was stupid and all it had told me was that I was going to spend the year failing, then being negative and trapped by own beliefs, then dying, then being poor and unpopular. I declared that unless I got a nice card for December, I would consider the whole thing null and void.
- DECEMBER – THE SUN (FOLLOWED BY THE SIX OF CUPS, THE TEN OF PENTACLES AND THE EIGHT OF PENTACLES)
This is the best card in the deck. It represents your best, highest self and being exactly where you need to be. It fell out of the deck suddenly just as I was finishing my shuffle for December and I was obviously delighted, but wasn’t sure if that counted as a “draw,” so I did something you’re sometimes encouraged to do in Tarot, which is to draw three further “explainer” cards to offer some context on what you just saw. My explainer cards were the Six of Cups again (nostalgia, playfulness, childhood innocence), the Ten of Pentacles (wealth, family, success, stability, legacy, home) and the Eight of Pentacles (patience, hard work, harvest). I declared this Tarot spread to be an unqualified success – clearly the cards with more negative connotations were just necessary learning experiences, or things to be wary of along the way, on my path towards ending the year happy, rich and fulfilled. Tarot predicts the future and is 100% objectively true.
A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Sunil Patel, who previously made an excellent Idiot’s Guide To Cryptocurrency for BBC Radio 4, has just released his followup, An Idiot’s Guide To Bagging An Heiress, and it’s so silly and brilliant. Can’t wait to follow all his tips and finally become rich. Maybe that’s how my year ends so well?
What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – I watched the Les Mis movie this week for a Les Mis-themed murder mystery, and burst out laughing literally every time Hugh Jackman was onscreen. It’s such a bafflingly earnest performance. You’ve got to watch it, it’s hard to explain why it’s so funny.
Book Of The Week – Still on Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, which continues to be absolutely hilarious and brilliant. Three in every twenty pages are him reiterating that the sound quality of MP3 is really poor, and he pities young people who don’t know how music used to sound. I’m not even exaggerating. Three in every 20. He just finished a chapter by writing “If you’re not enjoying this, give it to someone else. End of chapter.” I 100% guarantee that Neil Young has not read this book.
Album Of The Week – Heaven And Earth by John Martyn. This was John Martyn’s “last” album, although it technically came out after he died and was finished off by lots of other people putting overdubs on his unfinished demos, so I dunno if it really counts as “his” album. It doesn’t really do anything that his previous couple of albums weren’t doing already, but he was a titan and a giant and a wonderful soul, so it’s nice to finally get round to listen to what he was working on right to the end.
Film Of The Week – Les Miserables. Ridiculous film. The music is obviously great, and Jackman is incredibly good value, but I hate musicals where they sing all the way through, and we found Javert incredibly annoying. He jumps off a bridge because he cannot mentally square the circle of a criminal having been nice to him? Sort your head out, mate.
That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time,
Joz xx
PS If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they do, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated.
PPS Here is a photo from the aforementioned murder mystery. I know what you’re thinking – this doesn’t look like Les Mis. Well more fool you, because my secret was that I was actually Jean Valjean and had taken on the identity of the Phantom of the Opera in order to evade the police. Big shout-out to murder mystery writer extraordinaire Luke Rollason for masterminding this incredible twist.
