The Beauty of the Year: An Annual Tarot Spread for Review & Renewal
Is this just an annual review tarot spread or is this secretly a spread to help us work with the magick of Venus retrograde? Yes.
Even though I don't tend to do end of the calendar year readings (or annual spreads at all for that matter) since I celebrate the end of the seasonal year at Samhain, I felt a need for something different this January. These past few years have felt both more amorphous and intense because of our ongoing shared global experience of crisis. So it has felt useful to add in more points of purpose and reflection at times of ending and beginning - such as we experience at the changing of the calendar year. Throw into the mix the Venus retrograde (read more about that through the wisdom of Chani) and there's a call for us to reflect and remember, release and renew all of which lends itself well to an annual review tarot spread.
With that in mind, let's work with Venus in retrograde as a guide, helping us to review the year that has passed, looking within before looking ahead.
Cards shown are from The Natural Ink Tarot
The Crone, Inanna, and Venus Retrograde
As the calendar year ends and begins again so many of us get caught up in the pressure to live in ways that “better” than we currently are, to be more perfect, more beautiful in all ways in our life. Yet, when Venus Retrogrades we are left not with the direct experience of harmonizing beauty (which is what Venus brings) but the question of “What is Beauty?”
Many astrologers liken the energy of Venus Retrograde to the story of the Descent of Inanna. It's an apt and useful comparison as the story of Inanna and her sister, Ereshkigal, is ripe with metaphor and wisdom. I also like to recognize Venus Retrograde as helping us to connect with the energy of the Crone who is beyond the need to be desired by anything other than their infinite self, emancipated from societal expectations of beauty, and confidently centered in their power as something wildly independent yet intimately intertwined with the ecosystem of life, death, decay, and renewal. Venus as a Crone asks of us:
What would you do with your life if you were not blinded by beauty or afraid of your own shortcomings?
How would you live if you clothed yourself only with self-assuredness, the songs of your ancestors, and glimmering jewels of visions of the worlds to come?
How would you feel if you always found yourself at home within the deep knowing of your bones no matter where you were in the world?
What a powerful practice to look back on where we've been in order to dream of where we might go. As we review the year we let go that which we no longer need, pick up what may have been forgotten, and affirm what it is that keeps us steady on the path of becoming more sturdy and well-loved within ourselves, calling in and calling ourselves back to community along the way.
We are all just ancestors in the making and reflection practices like these help us to move along the path of the young crone, the baby hag, the old-one-in-training. And in the very practical living of our lives which rotate on an annual axis, the following tarot spread helps us to measure our needs, call in our power, and reflect in order to remember and renew.
An Annual Tarot Spread for Review & Renewal
Before you cast your cards, take a minute to create a space of beauty in which to work. Creating beauty will mean something different to all of us from setting up an altar, to taking a moment to cleanse and dress ourselves with intention or spending a moment tidying up our space. Beauty calls to beauty and since we are working with Venusian energies it can enhance the casting of our cards and the clarity of our reading to try and align ourselves with beauty from the start.
Card 1. Overview of Beauty
Where did the beauty of your life emerge this year? This is a card that helps us to connect with the beauty of the year whether generous or hard won, hard to see or brightly shining. To connect with the beauty of the year is not to ignore its hardships, but to help us find our strength through our beauty and the beauty of our community connections.
Cards 2 & 3. What Needs to be Released
These two cards help us to understand what it is that needs to be released and let go of. Sometimes these can be ways that we perceive ourselves, our lives, our work. Sometimes they are practices or ideas that we have enjoyed but it is time to honor and retire. In order to open ourselves up to the promise of renewal, we need to make space in our lives for such magick to take place.
Card 4 & 5. What Needs to be Recovered
These two cards help us recognize what may have been left behind, but it's time to bring back into our lives. These could be practices that we set aside whether through forgetfulness, busyness or a change in our lives. It might be a practice that we are entering into a renewed relationship with (i.e. approaching yoga not as a consumer but as a student committed to honoring the practice's roots or returning to a forgotten but favorite childhood pastime). Sometimes what needs to be recovered is more abstract in practice but still potent in experience - a feeling, a sense of home, a calling to hope.
Card 6. What Needs to be Faced
Returning again to the myth of the Descent of Inanna, after She has gone through the seven gates from the Great Above to the Great Below, She steps into the space of Her sister, Ereshkigal. With no treasures clothing Her, nothing shielding Her, Inanna is must face Her own vulnerability, Her mortality, and the finite reality of Her existence. So here is a card which reflects back to us something which needs to be faced - these are often entrenched but unhelpful habits (like overwork) that seem inevitable and unquestionable, but are ultimately the things we cloth ourselves with that can and should be set aside. Another way to understand the energy of the card is to imagine Venus as Crone, delighted in her own mortality, laughing and saying, "What makes you so fearful of your own wild life?"
Card 7. The Promise of Renewal
Here is the card which brings us back to the surface, returning from our retrograde, facing forward with the momentum of the year. It is a glimpse into what might become and our own beauty, newly understood and remembered, in the making.
Cards shown are from The Natural Ink Tarot
An Optional Addition: The Two Helper Cards
If you want, you can cast two additional helper cards to assist you in connect you with much needed allies. In the myth of Inanna, She is recovered from the underworld by two beings called galla (fun fact: these beings which are described in as "neither male nor female" are ancient examples of nonbinary and transgender expression). Cast two additional cards on either side of the spread to represent the type of support you should call to you in order to thrive or, more mythically speaking, to be brought back to life, renewed and restored.
᠅
If you love these types of tarot spread that center healing in the reading, you might enjoy my post on using tarot in your healing practice. For those of you stuck in the intensity of the descent that Venus Retrograde can sometimes bring, worrying that you’ll never get your magick back, here’s a love letter just for you. And if you’re just looking for more tarot spreads, come this way.
May the season of Venus Retrograde help you uncover the path of beauty in your life.
This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎
