The Oracle of Many Paths, Discovering Beauty Tarot, The Yukika Tarot, Conjunction Tarot, Hexen 2.0 Tarot

Content warning: there are several pictures of snakes ahead

Hello 2026! One thing that made 2025 a bit of a “rediscovering” Tarot year for me was starting out with a intensive month of studying the Terra Volatile. This helped put my mind in study mode for the better part of the year. I ended the year in study mode as well focusing on my pip decks which I thoroughly enjoyed and am continuing to study as well. I wanted to keep that open mind feeling I had last January, but seeing as I did intensive study last month, I wanted to channel more fun and free “Fool” energy this month, so my chosen theme is “Beginnings,” or utilizing decks that I really feel I do not “understand” so I can sit with them in bewilderment and awe.

Most of these decks are new to me, with the exception of Discovering Beauty Tarot, which is a deck I’ve used a bit last year but it has a lot of unexplored depth in it’s Notan inspired art by Sophia Litwak. ALL of these decks are difficult, deep, and challenging decks that ask the mind to do lots of work. The lovely Yukika Tarot (by Stasia Burrington, same artist who made the Sasuraibito Tarot) feels the most RWS of the bunch, but it’s still very fast and loose with it’s interpretations and is also a wonderfully profound deck. The Oracle of Many Paths, which is a Tarot with an oracle function, is classic weird and wonderful creation of James R. Eads and is so, so refreshingly new in it’s take on the Tarot system made into a map. The new cool kid on the block, the Conjunction Tarot by Ina Auderieth is a moody, eerie Thoth deck with roots in metaphysics and hermeticism. I don’t by any means intend to master any of these decks by the end of the month, but rather to give myself a big sand box to start this year of my Tarot exploration. I’m hoping as the year goes to revisit each of these decks as a touch stone of 2026.

And then I feel like I need to address the wildly complex Hexen 2.0 Tarot (Suzanne Treister) which I find is far too often above me, and its the only deck I’ve use in which I feel a bit like an imposter when I am drawing cards from it. I’m using it in this monthly draw as my “oracle” card, but I almost did not write and publish this post because of this deck. Okay! Enough talk, let the cards fall! (er, jump, I guess)

Normally I read my Empress as nature or a nature-driven creator, the wellspring of creation, a Persephone entity, a mother, the untamed wilderness to the organized Emperor’s civilization. Underneath that assumption is there are invisible things, almost like magic, at play. Systems built to keep a world working a certain way, much like a natural food chain, the lifecycle of water, etc. Here it seems we see some human created systems that operate unseen in our world. As I said already, the Hexen 2.0 is above my reading level as it were, and I’ll let the reader draw their own conclusions about this card, but I’m keeping my classic Empress in mind as I go on.

Portals oh my!

The Yukika Tarot re-envisions the Wheel of Fortune as a portal to another dimension—goodness, there is certainly a lot of us out there that feel like we’ve steeped into a whole other world! We cannot see what is in front of us, but onward we go whether we want to or not! It’s a great leap into the unknown.

The Oracle of Many Paths’ portal has the great World Serpent in its 17 card (The Star) spiraling into the sky. The lore of the post-apocalyptic deck explains the serpent is considered a magical and extremely lucky entity to see (Breath of the Wild anyone?), and the portal, should you be quick and brave or foolhardy enough to jump into, will lead you to another world. I saw this and immediately thought of Falkor, the white Luck Dragon from The Never Ending Story, who is one of my favorite characters of all time. Snakes, being that they periodically shed their skin, seem an interesting animal to represent The Star, as its the starting over after the fall of The Tower.

So, the unseeable path forward is one of hope.

Snakes seem to be a theme of this draw. I personally am fascinated by snakes, so it’s particularly interesting for me to see the ways they pop up in draws. In the Conjunction’s Two of Disks, it seemed at first glance the snakes are biting the hands, but actually, if you look closely, their tongues are passively tasting the air. Right away I get sensing fear but actually there is none to be had when I look carefully. As with a standard two of pentacles, we see a sense of balance and opposites being able to compliment one another; we have silver and gold, warm blooded and cold blooded, yin and yang, sun and the moon, black and white (honestly I feel this card encapsulates this whole deck in it’s general vibe).

And perhaps the most epic Judgement card ever to exist came out of Discovering Beauty. Here we see Medusa as our Judgement. Though traditionally Medusa has played the role of the bad guy, her story is actually an incredible story of womanhood that unfortunately rings true through the ages; being blamed for the violence done unto her, and rising to become so much more and stronger despite all the gods against her and ultimately portrayed as evil for her survival. This card and deck demands we do better by Medusa and by ourselves. We experience terrible things that ought not to happen, but we find in our resourceful natures a chance for us to heal our scars, find acceptance and kindness for ourselves, and become something awe inspiring and terrible for those who mean us ill.

Together I take these cards to mean the pendulum swings in both directions, now is the time to grow into something stronger than what you were.

Oftda.

I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot these past months.

This is a draw speaking of change, of things unseen happening, of choosing the unknown and going forth with faith and hope, of seeing a sense of balance amidst strong dichotomy and becoming better in a very profound sense. With our strong serpent energy I see coming out of our old skin into a new world—what that will look and act like is yet to be seen.