2026 - A Year of Death and Birth

Maggie Shayne
Dec 29, 2025
11 min read

VIDEO POST ABOVE

Text Post Below

*All the links mentioned in the video are included the text version, plus a sidebar about my favorite deck if you're interested. TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions on childhood sexual abuse. This is not a political post. When I say "my nation" I am not meaning its government, but its heart, its people, all of us. That said, I hope you enjoy going a little woo-woo with me. (I figure you must, or you wouldn't be here.)

2026 Predictions

Based on a little bit of numerology and a lot of tarot

Hey, here we are again at the Coffee House Blog. Things are changing, as I'm doing video versions of the posts here. I hope you like them.

This post is a little different. We generally talk about books here, but it's the end of the year. I always try to glimpse what's ahead at this time of year, so I thought you might find it fun. Too.

If you're loking for how to find your own tarot card for the year ahead, add the digits of your birth month and day and those of 2026. You'll see how in the examples below or in the video.

I have studied numerology a little bit and tarot a lot, so I'm having some fun with predictions for the coming year because of its powerful numbers. In numerology one adds the digits of a number together reducing it to a single digit. In my tarot studies, one does this to equate the year with a tarot card for additional insights.

In the case of 2026 we have 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 which equals 10.

In numerology, when you get a 2-digit product, you add those two, and so on until you have a single digit answer. So 1 + 0 = 1.

But in this case, both the 10

and the 1 hold powerful meaning for two reasons. 10s are like aces in a deck of playing cards. Aces can be the both the highest card, higher than a king, or the lowest, standing in for a 1. Also because the Tarot method keeps all two digit results up to 22, the number of major arcana cards in a standard deck.

10s indicate the completion of a cycle. They are an ending. The thing is finished, done, over. It has reached its peak. The next step is a new beginning as the 0 falls away and the 1 stands alone, back at the starting line, ready to grow into a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and so on, all the way to 10 where it once again becomes a 1. It's an endless and ongoing cycle. It reflects the cycle of life, doesn't it? We're born, we grow, we live and learn and experience and create. And then we die, and the 0 falls away. We leave our bodies and our lives and all we've built or gathered. We leave with only our truest, purest selves, and that's how we will be reborn. An innocent 1, ready to begin again.

We can use the numerology of our birthdate and the current year to determine our corresponding major arcana tarot card and theme for the year. This a fun New Year's exercise. You can find a lot more about this in Tarot for Yourself by Mary K. Greer.

I strongly recommend getting the paperback version if you're into tarot. It's a workbook and has questions and exercises with spaces for you to fill in your results. The ebook wouldn't be the same experience, but could certainly be done. I think there's an audiobook as well.

It's one of my top two books on Tarot. Highly recommended. 5-stars.

This link is to the book at Bookshop.org

Do you know you can choose a local independent bookstore there to get the profits from each sale, and they make nearly the same as they would by selling the book on site? Do that while you're there. It's important to support our indie bookstores. If we don't, they'll die off and become a quaint memory of the olden days. We can't let that happen.

See the book here!

Not an affiliate link

So, back on topic. It works like this. You add up the numbers of your birthdate but use the current year. For me that works out to 18. So 18 is my year number, and that corresponds to The Moon card in Tarot.

So I'll be studying that as the year begins, and also the further breakdown (18 = 1 + 8 = 9) which is The Hermit, called The Seeker in my favorite deck.)

I'm pondering the myriad implications of these cards for my coming 12 months. But meanwhile, I'm equally interested in my nation's year card.

Since our birthday is most widely accepted as July 4th, let's plug that into the formula.

7 + 4 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 18

Hey, wait a minute! Does that mean that my nation and I are on the same page this year? Or maybe it's more that we'll both be on a similar journey through our ongoing evolution.

Let's explore the cards and their meanings, although with the caveat that every card in the Tarot is said to have 500 possible interpretations. And that's an arbitrary number that is really just trying to convey that it's subjective. You read the cards based on the order in which you lay them out, and which cards came before, after, above, or below them, and also most importantly, on the feelings that well up in you as you look at them.

Sidebar on Tarot Decks: Different decks take different angles. In the deck I use most, The Witches Tarot by Ellen Cannon Reed, the cards relate to the Tree of Life. (This is NOT the same deck as The Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan. The Reed book and deck are older and out of print.) There's a companion book called The Goddess and the Tree. These were originally The Witches Qabala Book 1 and Book 2. I'll leave images below so you can hunt them down used. I have two sets, as the first deck is nearly worn out from all the use I've given it over the years and the pages literally fall out of the book when I open it. In this deck the minor arcana equate to the spheres (sephira) and the major to the paths between the spheres, the journeys of evolution we travel throughout existence. It's very deep.

END SIDEBAR

Okay, so let's begin with the larger number as this is the way the Ellen Reed book instructs us to interpret it. 18. Same number for the nation and for me this year. It's The Moon, the card of illusion verses reality. The card where one learns to see through the bullshit.

Traditional meanings: Illusion, deception or self-deception. Being bewildered and unclear. Having to look deeply at subconscious fears that might be driving your actions. Becoming disilllusioned with and estranged from someone or something you once believed in. Introspection. Developing psychic abilities. Learning to flow with your feelings rather than being swamped by them. Paying attention to dreams and visions and fantasies to understand what your subconscious is trying to tell you. Karmic relationships from the past that must be worked on. Evolution.

Qabala meanings: Physical evolution. Learning about nature. Accepting that which is hidden. Looking beneath the surface. Seeing through the veneer. That which is hidden comes to light.

Look at the card. There is a dog and a wolf. The dog represents the familiar, the safe, that which we know, our normal. Our tame and civilized self. The wolf represents the wild and unfamiliar, the parts we don't let loose as often. Our wild, uncivilized cave-woman side. They are different-–man's best friend on the right, a deadly predator who'd eat you as soon as look at you on the left. Yet their DNA is 98.8% the same. And the two sides of us are 100% the same.

Look at the water in the foreground. The surface is choppy and dangerous looking with a lobstrosity snapping its claws in your general direction. (*There's a book and a movie reference in that sentence if you'd care to play along.)

But beneath the surface the water is calm, and peaceful fish float past each other. Fish represent the serenity of deep wisdom. Water is healing and transformation. But you can't get to that without moving past the lobstrosity.

Look at the path. There's a giant man-eating spider on that path! That's intimidating. But no, wait, only six legs. That's no spider, it's a scarab beetle which represents resurrection and rebirth.

The scarab rolls dung balls from east to west. Always east to west, representing the journey of the sun as it rises, crosses the sky, and sets again. The sun was believed to visit the underworld by night. So the story it tell is of birth, life, death, rebirth. Over and over.

The beetle morphs tremendously from grub stage to winged beetle, so it is a powerful symbol of metamorphosis. There is great change needed to reach our goals, and great change underway on this particular part of our journey, my nation's and my own.

Great change. Hmm. It mentioned physical change earlier, and I've definitely kicked my lifestyle up to another, even healthier level for the new year. I'm taking whole new strategies with my work, too.

Great change, including physical change for our nation could be just about anything. Change in its physical makeup might result as immigrants are expelled and imprisoned, and the uneducated and poor die in greater numbers from preventable diseases like measles, whooping cough, smallpox, polio, and covid.

But on the other hand, metamorphosis is constant growth and improvement, evolution within a single lifestime. It's usually a positive change, or at least a progressive one, in the sense of taking things further and better. So what positive physical changes might we see in our nation? It's worth considering. I don't think the ground is going to shift under our feet, but our infrastructure is changing. Not for the better. But might it be that the negative changes are what will inspire the positive ones? Might we not grow and progress further than ever before after a time of oppression and strife? I think so.

Taking it all together, it seems we'll be seeing big changes this year as we evolve beyond our current reality. We'll bravely move through the scary surface level stuff to get to the wisdom and improvement that lies beneath.

Old wounds must be faced and healed. Deceptions no longer work. We can see the reality now. I can see this applying equally to myself and my country and in remarkably similar ways. There are old wounds from my own childhood that have never healed, and our nation has old unhealed wounds too.

Genocides, slavery, war, violence, lynchings, rapes. And then there are the horrors inflicted upon our children by sexual predators that has been known but ignored for far too long. One out of three women in the USA have been sexually assaulted as a child. We all know it. I was a victim of sexual abuse from age eleven to fifteen. I thought I was alone, a freak, that what was happening was somehow my fault. I was flawed. This didn't happen to normal girls.

It's only now that I realize it was happening everywhere, and it still is.

I feel that, as a nation, we're waking up to harsh truths we've long wished to deny. I think we're becoming disillusioned with the glamourous mask of wealth and power and seeing the ugliness underneath. I think we're recognizing that the topics that feel too dangerous or scary to discuss must be brought into the light if we are ever going to get past the surface level chaos and down to true wisdom, healing, and peace.

But it's a difficult path that requires us to wade straight into those dangerous, scary-looking places. We can't get to the other side in any other way. We have to walk the path, through the choas and darkness, into the light. We have to face it and make it better.

I think 2026 is a year about having the difficult conversations and doing the hard things required to evolve to our next stage. I think we have to.

The further breakdown of the numbers gave us a 9, which corresponds to the card most decks call The Hermit, and my chosen desk calls The Seeker.

Traditional meanings: Solitude for the purpose of learning. Research. A search for meaning. Preoccupation with details. Examining things concealed or hidden. A journey. Timing. A need to plan and take things slowly. Mastery of what you've been working on. A teacher, guide, guru, counselor, expert or friend to help your inner search OR being that teacher, guide, guru, expert or friend to someone else. A time to observe and keep silent.

Qabala meanings: A search for light. A desire to "go a little farther." Reaching out to the ancient ones for wisdom. A quest for a teacher, or possibly becoming a teacher, especially a spiritual teacher. And despite that the card is a 9 the book says it resonates with the number 10.

Which brings us right back around to 2026 = 10 = 1. A cycle ending. A cycle beginning.

Looking at the card, it reminds me a litte of The Fool, the card of pure potential and childlike faith. Both cards depict a person on what might be the edge of a cliff. The Fool has complete faith and is walking along, not looking down, confident that wherever they end up will be exactly where they're meant to be. But The Seeker is not racing forward in faith. They are older and wiser and have been through some shit. So they're not only looking ahead, they're holding up a light to try to see what's out there. They aren't walking forward, they're standing still, studying the path ahead.

But that light they hold is also a beacon, guiding the way for others. It lets those ahead know they're coming, and those behind find their way. The Seeker not only searches, but also guides. However, they move slowly and deliberately, taking care with each step.

I think there are times in life for racing ahead in giddy delight, in perfect love and perfect trust like The Fool. And I think there are times for standing still and holding up our light. I am the race ahead and trust type, and always have been. Leap and a net will appear, that kind of thing.

But not everyone can move at that pace. And maybe I shouldn't always be, either. Maybe by pausing and holding up our lamps and seeing what's out there, we give the slower walkers time to catch up, and ourselves time to get oriented and achieve clarity. Maybe we reach the first peak and then pause and beam for a while to let others find their way to us.

Maybe the message is that we should take a breath after reaching a big goal, and let ourselves shine within that new achievement for a bit. Celebrate the wins along the way, before beginning the next leg of the journey.

I could go on. When I read for people they get 15 or 20 pages. I could dig and probe the various ways to interpret these cards for the rest of the morning. But I think I'll stop here, and let you ponder them yourselves.

Pondering is one of the things Seekers and Hermits do best, after all.

This might be my year for being a little bit more deliberate and thoughtful, for taking my time to really see beneath the surface before rushing ahead based on emotion alone.

For me, the cards seem to suggest a cycle is ending and a new one beginning. I'm going to mull on that all week long as the year wanes, and maybe do an end of year reading for myself to get some deeper insights.

If you enjoy esoteric topics like this, you'll like my books about witches, where I get to weave all kinds of authentic witchy wisdom into the stories. I have two witch-themed series of four books each, several stand-alone stories, a couple of non-fiction books, and an entire blog on the subject.

Three harem slaves in Ancient Babylon betray the king by falling in love and practicing ancient magic, forbidden to ordinary women. Hands bound, they are sacrificed, pitched from the cliffs outside the glittering city.

In modern New York, Indira Simon dreams this tale over and over–and wakes with rope burns on her wrists. A sexy priest shows up out of nowhere claiming he can help.

I'll add the trailer for you here, and at the end of the video version of this post. The song is an original, Witches on the Wind, vocals and music by Dan Hall, lyrics by David O. Norris.