At the beginning of 2024, I wrote about how to find your personal tarot card for the year. To kick off this new year, I want to discuss the tarot card for 2025. This card is for all of us and is often a summary of what to expect from the year ahead.
If you’d like to find out what your personal tarot card for 2025 is, all you need is your phone. For this exercise, we are only going to focus on the major arcana portion of the tarot deck. Although there are 22 cards, they are numbered 0 to 21. When you do the math to get the number correspondence for your card, you will want a number between 1 and 22. It is impossible to get a 0 when you are adding numerical values higher than 0 together. To compensate for not being able to have 0 as a number, if your final number is 22, then that means The Fool card, card number 0, is your card for the year.
The first thing you will do is add your birth month and day to the current year, 2025. Let’s look at an example. For our example, we’ll use a birthdate of February 10th. You can add 2 (for the month of February) plus 10 (for the day) plus 2025. If you add 2+10+2025, you get 2037. 2037 is much bigger than numbers 1 to 22, so we will need to reduce this number. Next, we will add 2+0+3+7, which gives us 12. Using this method, card number 12 — the Hanged Man card — will be your card for the year.
To find the tarot card that represents 2025, we will do a similar exercise of adding each number for 2025 together. 2+0+2+5=9. When finding your personal tarot card for the year and when finding the tarot card for the collective for the year, we are going to focus on the cards in the major arcana portion of the tarot deck. Card number 9 of the major arcana is The Hermit card. However, if you’d like to get more in-depth, you can also look at the cards of the minor arcana that share the number 9 as well.
2025 marches to a different tarot beat than 2024 did. The card for 2024 was Strength. But 2025 will be ruled by The Hermit, which invites introspection. Instead of pushing forward, this card advocates for a strategic withdrawal, a pause for self-reflection and understanding. This is a fantastic year for study. Deepen your knowledge with books, classes, and lectures. Get a library card. Work closely with a trusted teacher or mentor. It’s also possible you could play that role with others. Share what you know and be open to other ways of looking at the world.
The Hermit card is also a card of taking a step back from the world. This can allow us to gain clarity. Many worked hard in the past year, only to see their goals fall short. Rest is needed. Wise elders will emerge, and the heroes may wear cloaks instead of capes. Many world leaders may retire or step out of the spotlight for other reasons. The fight to preserve wisdom could be intense as institutions such as libraries, schools, and universities come under attack. We must not let history repeat itself, or we could return to a new dark age. The wisest among us have learned from the past and will shine a light on what we need to do to keep moving toward an enlightened future.
And perhaps most poignantly, the number 9 represents the end of a cycle. Certain situations may be ready to wrap up in your life. This will allow space for new things to come into your life. Let go and trust that the universe will sort it out.
The Hermit is associated with Virgo, a sign that knows how to clean, declutter, heal, and serve. 2025 brings an opportunity to clean up after ourselves and others. No matter how big the mess may be, a concentrated effort will clear the slate and lay the groundwork for a fresh start.
Emily Guenther is a co-owner of The Broom Closet metaphysical shop. She is a Memphis native, professional tarot reader, ordained Pagan clergy, and dog mom.