What Peacemaker’s Tarot Has to Say about This New Year of Peace!

I’m as flabbergasted as you are. It’s suddenly 2026. I’m a Tarot Writer and Reader. It’s the New Year. I’ve done a reading I want to share with you! I’m using my typical five-card Spread. My cards are specifically mine. My reading is similar to one that that many use but includes my own questions which address my understanding of the how the world works.

This is the layout with the cards I drew from a well-shuffled deck. I’m going to take a few lines to address the reasons I’ve laid the cards out in this format. I’ll take a quick look at the design of the cards. Then I’ll speak about what the cards might mean in their particular positions. Only then will I tie those cards together and offer some suggestions for what we might do together.

I moved away from the original pictured-centered expression of the cards. There are those, even though I see my cards as an interpretation of traditional tarot, who feel that I have taken Peacemaker’s Tarot too far. Aside from moving away from using the pictures for finding meaning, I’ve also worked very hard to move away from many of the isms that are, as I understand them, endemic to those pictorial representations. I chose a central word to represent the cards, bolstering those definitions with two ways that those cards are experienced. Those differences are linked by a one-sided, two-dimensional Möbius strip. Even traveling a different direction, they will endlessly meet again as they journey.

The first cards chosen are laid out in Past, Present, and Future. Overlooking them is the fourth card, from which our Fate, our Deepest Understanding, or perhaps, as I have called them, our Better Angels, suggest that we Stop! Look! Listen! to the connections and possibilities of these cards. What do your values demand you pay attention to? What are those values based in/on?

Then lastly, we take a look at the situation we’re living in and how it will impact our movement into the future we’re building toward.

NEWSFLASH: I had done the reading. Written the article. Set up the spread in a comprehensible fashion. Then my phone had alerted me that my country had invaded Venezuela. Whatever else I or you may think about this, I think we ought to consider what it means that the urgeeeerne

I’d like to ask you to consider this reading at two levels. First, what might this mean for your life?  Second, how will you participate in bringing the Future into existence for our community, our country? How do each of these categories respond to your personal and communal Peacemaking? How do they support our Democracy? Given the recent US invasion of Venezuela, how do the cards urge us to support the world’s rights?

1. The Past: So much happened over the last year. When you reflect on it, consider what happened that changed you? Were you a participant in that change? Or do you feel a bit blindsided? In the balance of gains and losses, how do you feel about those things? Do you feel that you attained important goals?
2. The Present. What if you were to re-imagine your Possibilities? Is your dream too small? Will it keep you from doing things that will move you into the Future you’d dearly love? Are you helping your community, your government, becoming the person you want to be, offering the best of yourself?
3. I think most of us have dreams for the future. A really important question to ask here is do we have plans to make these dreams come true? Good conversations help us know if our dreams are big enough — or too big!
4. I call this card ‘better angels’. If that’s an image that works for you, fine. If not, does the word Values work for you? Are you working from your values? Imagine how much more easily you will work if you do!
5. What’s the road you’re traveling? What is the atmosphere or the climate of our society, your career, your dreams, your relationships? How do you work most efficiently within those parameters?

Now let’s look at the cards we drew within the above parameters. We’ll look at them first card by card within the category it was chosen in and what that mean. Then we’ll look at them together and see what we might do, together and separately to bring Peace into the world. Let’s look at our own lives first.

1. The Card picked for the Past was XVIII–Reflection (if you use traditional Tarot, that’s the Moon card.) What messages of encouragement or undermining might you have missed in this time? What does looking back give you the power to discern that you might have found challenging when the past was your present, but now that it’s yesterday’s news, you’re able to see places where you might have done better and let’s be clear, places where you might have shined — and weren’t quite ready to acknowledge and take responsibility for? Look at that now — allow the Moon’s Magic to glimmer!
2. The Present had 0–Innocence as its card. You’re right here. What if, knowing that you are secure in where you are right now, you took the opportunity to look with new eyes at what is possible right now. Be curious about the options, relying on the safety of your strengths. There is more in you than you have been willing to take responsibility for. Explore them. Many of us have no clear idea who we might allow ourselves to be!
3. Wow! The Future is XVI–Interference. Do you know that that card did not show up at all in the Moon readings I did on line for 2025. And, yet, as I was drawing cards for the first Bright of the Moon in 2026, the card drawn was exactly this. It’s time for us to interfere in what is going on in our world. How do we do that? Together. Time to start widening our circles! Who does what you do well? Invite them on the Peace walk. Who has talents that make the best use of your gifts? They’re your partners. Time to make some good trouble. No better way to make it than on a PeacePath!
4. What do your Better Angels have to offer? IV–Creation. It’s an act of daring that calls on your courage to consider your deepest abilities and then it urges you to bridge the gaps you encounter between your Peacemaking and another’s. We’re all on the same journey.
5. And what journey is that? XVII–Leadership. We’ve been holding back long enough. It’s time for us to assume responsibility for how our part of the Peace journey goes. Are you the one who packs the snacks? The one who plots the route? The one who makes new friends (who also have good snacks!) Are you the dreamer? Or the Engineer. Or as so many of us are, really good at organizing the small things, comforting the weary, encouraging the uncertain. There is work (both large and small) for all of us in the work of Peacemaking.

Thanks for reading. I know not everyone is interested in cards. However, I found that these cards were not giving answers, but rather asking good questions about how we live our lives as individuals and as part of communities, whether you’re talking about a family or a nation. Now is the time to ask those questions. How are you doing that? I wish you all a Meaningful and Peaceful 2026.

Salaam, Shalom, Peace, and Blessed Be!