Hello 2026!

This month I decided to bring my art and tarot knowledge together to create an exercise you might find useful. I ended up writing quite a bit about my own tarot reading practice, specifically about the difference between projective tarot reading and intuitive tarot reading. You may be surprised at how I use both and why. The full post turned into a writing exercise you can try for yourself with any tarot or oracle card.

After the excerpt from this blog post below, you will find my notes from the 2026 Year Ahead Reading we conducted last month. This includes the questions we ask each year during the initial reading of the spread. While you may have revisited the monthly cards with us before, I've never before shared the actual spread questions I created back when the group started in 2018. Every year I think I might change some of them but never end up doing that. Let me know if you have ideas for different questions we might ask next year.

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An excerpt: Seven ways to describe a tarot card.

Using the 7 elements of art to see your tarot cards more clearly.

Back in the early days of my Philadelphia Tarot Meetup, my go-to reading tip for brand new readers was to simply look at the card and describe it. This would invariably result in all of the experienced tarot readers around the table, nodding in agreement that they had just heard the traditional meaning of the card from someone who had no idea what that was.

In those days, we met in person in South Philly, but when our events moved to Zoom in 2020, I kept giving this tip. It does provide a place to start, but I’ve begun to notice many people struggle to describe an image. So I thought I’d put my art teaching background to work here and explore how the 7 elements of art might help.

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As this post is being written on the first day of 2026, we’ll use the card of the year for this experiment: the Wheel of Fortune.

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I’ve come to see my cards as a device for setting boundaries—both for myself and for the querent. When a psychic message comes through and the tarot cards laid in front of you agree, that’s confirmation that the message is something you’ve channelled and not something you are projecting from some unknown part of your unconscious.

As a querent, I’ve received messages that were projected onto me from the reader and not from the cards. I’ve come to think of these as spells. In the moment I could feel they had nothing to do with me. But the messages lingered and had a lasting negative impact on my life.

Keep reading here: https://www.kimberlyessex.com/blog/7-ways-to-describe-a-tarot-card​

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Your invitation:

We meet this week for Tarot Reading Practice and we will begin to explore the cards we pulled in our 2026 Year Ahead Tarot Reading last month beginning with the 9 of Cups. Until then, I am sharing the notes from our reading exclusively with newletter subscribers right here below.

1st House — Aries

Question: How will we be supported in presenting ourselves to each other?

Card: Nine of Cups (Golden Art Nouveau Tarot)

• sitting with your own sense of intuition about what is yours
• having a sense that we each have our inner authority and respecting that
• celebrating each other's successes, instead of being a big mask of success
• presenting ourselves in a genuine way, and being, accepted at that face value
• finding ways to express ourselves with the things around us

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2nd House — Taurus

Question: How will we define what is and is not ours?

Card: The Chariot (Jungian Tarot)

• self-control, knowing what your lane is, being confident in your lane
• keeping a record of what was said to be yours and what was said to be mine
• holding what is yours as something that is yours to give if you choose
• balanced distribution, collective ownership
• taking responsibility for steering our own destiny

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3rd House — Gemini

Question: How will we be supported in sharing our point of view?

Card: Three of Cups (Star Trek Tarot)

• exuding self-confidence, this is me and this is who I am
• listening to and celebrating others makes you more worth listening to
• cultivating genuine interest in others
• celebrating others’ wins as our own
• connection grows through genuine curiosity and shared experience

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4th House — Cancer

Question: What will we need to nurture?

Card: Ten of Cups (Deviant Moon Tarot)

• loving the people near you and also yourself, respecting your own emotions
• sticking with our people is going to be really important in the year to come
• taking care of the earth and the environment around you
• creating community and family bonds by showing up again and again even when it's hard
• cultivating togetherness

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5th House — Leo

Question: How will we be supported in finding joy?

Card: Three of Pentacles (Universal Waite Tarot)

• mastering our skills, creative pursuits
• infectious enthusiasm for the creative process from sharing our work with each other
• having fresh eyes on the work that you're doing from a respectful audience
• getting beyond what you thing you’re capable of
• finding joy in envisioning something and actually building it

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6th House — Virgo

Question: What rituals and routines will best support us?

Card: Justice (Savron Forest Tarot)

• making a practice of helping others wherever and whenever you can
• looking for the thing that we don't have in our life right now that could be beneficial to us
• collaborating with nature
• having mindfulness to the impact you may have
• recognizing duality, consequence, and purpose

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7th House — Libra

Question: How will we be supported in creating alliances?

Card: The Hermit (Rider Waite Smith Tarot)

• spending time with yourself and getting clear with yourself
• making solid alliances based in mutual respect where boundaries are honored
• practicing discernment in looking for reasons and ways to create alliances
• shifting from looking for alignment to creating it for ourselves
• caution helps ensure alliances are real, not assumed

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8th House — Scorpio

Question: What will we have the power to change?

Card: The Fool (New Wave Tarot —featuring Frank Tovey)

• change begins with experimentation and risk
• trying new things and paving the way for others to do the same
• changing people's minds and hearts by changing our perspective
• seeing the potential in the non-traditional
• setting aside what we know in order to wipe the slate clean

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9th House — Sagittarius

Question: What will we come to understand?

Card: Nine of Swords (Jolanda Tarot)

• pain is multiple, shared, and not abstract
• recognizing other people’s pain alongside your own, finding empathy
• practicing decrement in deciding who to trust
• learning to tell the difference between real harm and imagined catastrophe
• understanding that everybody has a broken heart

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10th House — Capricorn

Question: Where will we find and place value?

Card: Justice (Brady Tarot)

• holding life and death, past and future, at the same time
• finding the value in what is not beautiful, admired, or prestigious
• truth matters even when it appears ugly, uncomfortable, or unnerving
• cleaning up what you’ve avoided or discarded
• honoring those who have been doing the work you did not want to do

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11th House — Aquarius

Question: What humanitarian ideals will be supported this year?

Card: Two of Cups (Fifth Spirit Tarot)

• understanding the connection between the haves and the have-nots
• connections between ordinary people, connection as resistance
• humble, honest, person-to-person connection
• growing rejection of greed, excess, and extreme concentration of power
• the have-nots making do without the help of the haves, mutual aid

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12th House — Pisces

Question: What will we keep hidden?

Card: Three of Pentacles (Weird Cats Tarot)

• less social media, not announcing all of our plans and all of our successes
• “look what I’ve got, look what I’m achieving” energy dropping out of favor
• cultivating an air of self-protection
• hiding our skills and our arts from being exploited
• secrecy can be sacred: protecting new growth from the wrong kind of attention

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This month's art workshop:

Join us on Zoom for Second Sundays Asemic Art Tarot Workshop from 3pm to 5pm ET for some abstract art-making inspired by tarot. No experience necessary. You need only a tarot deck and art materials of your choice to participate.

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This month's writing workshop:

Join us on Zoom for Last Sundays Generative Tarot Writing Workshop from 3pm to 5pm ET to write from the tarot together. No tarot or writing experience is necessary. You need only a tarot deck and something to write with to participate.

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Meditations:

If you didn't know, I've returned to school full time and also have a full time day job. So meditation offerings are currently on hold. You can continue to explore past live offerings at the Tarot & Meditations YouTube page.

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xo kim

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Book a Private Tarot or Meditation Zoom Session--for yourself or a small group: https://www.kimberlyessex.com/appointments​

Sign up to attend Tarot Reading, Writing, and Meditation Events: https://www.kimberlyessex.com/events​

View Monday Meditation Replays: https://www.youtube.com/@tarotandmeditations​
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Questions? Something you'd like to learn about in a blog post or workshop? I am happy to help. Email: kim@kimberlyessex.com​