How to Do a 12 Month Ahead Tarot Spread

Do you want to do a super simple tarot reading for 2025? I’ve got the most basic tarot spread for today.

At the beginning of each year I like to do a tarot reading where I simply draw one tarot card for each month of the coming year. I shuffle and cut the tarot deck with the intention to receive one tarot card for each month that offers a theme or advice for that month overall.

I went to a coffee shop to draw my tarot cards for the year ahead. This made it into a kind of special artist date for me.

Then I draw 12 cards and write a couple of sentences of interpretation of how that card could manifest in a given month. I go with whatever immediately comes to mind, which is usually the traditional meanings, the most obvious keywords. At the end of each month, I go back to that reading and add additional writing about what my experience was during the month as relates to that tarot card.

If you are just learning the tarot, this reading style makes it super simple to just grab your favorite card meaning book, and write down keywords from that book. You don’t even need to do any serious reading or research, just pick the keywords that jump out at you from your most trusted resource.

This is an interesting practice to work on your tarot card interpretations. Were your predictions accurate? What other meanings of that card showed up for you in the month instead? How would you change your reading now that you can look back at the month? Did you find a new meaning of the card that you hadn’t considered before?

You may also find yourself stumped about how that card applied to your month at all! This is a fascinating way to dig deeper into card meanings, and acknowledge how far reaching an interpretation can be. You can really stretch an idea to cover a lot of terrain. This shows how versatile the tarot is, but also how it can sometimes seem to mean almost anything. I like this reminder that the tarot is deeply useful and also vague to the point of uselessness.

Doesn’t that sum up life in a nutshell?

The worksheet I made to document the spread is super simple so I feel like it’s a breeze to fill out. Making my tarot readings for myself short is a good way to actually do them!

I feel like the point of tarot is to help me think, to reflect, and to shape and guide me in an impactful way. It makes me present, conscious, and aware. If a card isn’t resonating or stretching to cover a situation, I don’t push it. Allow that not all tarot readings are accurate or helpful. Sometimes the cards are just random or mysterious! I know that I don’t know everything.

The farther out into the year I go, the more skeptical I get that the tarot reading from 9 months ago could possibly still apply to my life now. Generally, I don’t like to read for events or phases farther out than 6 months. Things can change really fast in life, let alone over the course of a year, and I believe that can impact a tarot reading. Doing a 12 month ahead spread can be an interesting way of testing the limits of how far in advance you are comfortable drawing cards for an event, situation, or time frame. I may be skeptical, but I still draw the 12 month spread every year because it is fun, doesn’t take too much time, and is an interesting practice to study the tarot over the course of a year.

Will you do a 12 month ahead spread? I hope you do! If you’d like a little worksheet to help you organize your thoughts and track your year, you can download a copy of my worksheet here. It’s also in the Willow Path 2025 Planner, which you can purchase here.

Happy New Year 2025!