Cards Pulled:
The World • Seven of Pentacles • Temperance
Overall Meaning:
These three cards answer what needs to be left behind with surprising gentleness: not the failures or the pain, but the patterns that kept me from completion, from patience, from balance. The World asks me to leave behind the need to keep proving the cycle is complete. I finished something, and constantly re-testing whether it’s “really done” is what’s keeping me from the next beginning. The Seven of Pentacles wants me to release the exhausting assessment phase, the endless evaluation of whether my efforts are paying off, the refusal to just trust the work I’ve already done. Temperance is asking me to leave behind the extremes, the all-or-nothing thinking, the swinging between opposites, the belief that I have to choose one side when integration has been available all along.
What needs to stay in 2025 is the completion anxiety that won’t let me move on, the constant measuring that never trusts growth is happening, and the either/or framework that’s been exhausting me with false choices. The World says: you completed the cycle, stop checking if it’s really complete. The Seven of Pentacles says: you planted, you tended, now stop hovering over the garden with a clipboard. Temperance says: you know how to balance, stop performing extremes because you think you have to pick a side.
Card Breakdown:
The World ~ Completion
Keywords: Completion • Wholeness • Cycle’s End
What to Leave Behind: The pattern of reaching completion and immediately questioning whether it counts, whether it’s real, whether I did it right enough to actually be done. The World represents a cycle that’s finished, but I’ve been carrying the habit of never quite believing I’ve crossed the finish line. This year, I need to leave behind the compulsion to keep proving I completed something instead of trusting the evidence and moving on. The constant re-testing, the “but did I really,” the inability to let done be done, that stays in 2025.
Seven of Pentacles ~ Assessment
Keywords: Evaluation • Patience • Progress
What to Leave Behind: The exhausting assessment phase that never ends, the constant measuring of whether my efforts are yielding results, the refusal to trust that growth happens in invisible ways. The Seven of Pentacles shows someone pausing to evaluate their work, but I’ve been stuck in that pause, endlessly checking progress instead of just continuing to tend what I planted. This year, I need to leave behind the measuring stick that never shows me enough growth, the clipboard that tracks everything but trusts nothing. Stop hovering. Let things grow without constant surveillance.
Temperance ~ Integration
Keywords: Balance • Alchemy • Moderation
What to Leave Behind: The all-or-nothing thinking, the swinging between extremes, the belief that balance means choosing a side instead of holding both. Temperance has been teaching me integration all month, but I’ve been carrying the pattern of thinking I have to be either/or: either disciplined or free, either emotional or logical, either soft or strong. This year, I need to leave behind the framework that treats paradox as a problem to solve rather than a reality to inhabit. The false binary thinking, the exhausting pendulum swings—those stay in 2025.
Integration & Reflection:
What’s striking about these three cards is that none of them are pointing to obvious “bad” things to release, no Tower destructions, no Devil addictions, no difficult recognitions of harm. Instead, they’re naming subtle patterns that have been keeping me stuck even when I’m doing well: the completion that won’t complete because I won’t trust it, the growth I won’t acknowledge because I’m too busy measuring it, the balance I won’t inhabit because I think I have to choose extremes.
The World says I’ve finished cycles this year. Real ones. But I’ve been carrying them forward anyway, unable to let them actually end, constantly checking whether they’re “really” done. That energy of never quite believing I’m finished, that’s what needs to stay behind. Not the completion itself, but the anxiety that won’t let completion register.
The Seven of Pentacles says I’ve planted things, tended them, done the work. But I’ve been so focused on evaluating progress that I’ve forgotten to just keep growing. The constant assessment, the measuring whether it’s “working,” the clipboard that tracks but never trusts, that stays in 2025. Not the capacity for strategic thinking, but the inability to let growth happen without surveillance.
Temperance says I know how to integrate opposites, how to hold paradox, how to balance without rigidity. But I’ve been carrying the pattern of false binaries, the belief that I have to swing to extremes or choose sides. That either/or thinking that’s been exhausting me, that stays behind. Not the complexity, but the refusal to let complexity just exist without forcing it into simplified camps.
What I’m taking into 2026 is the actual completion (World), the actual growth (Seven of Pentacles), and the actual capacity for integration (Temperance). What I’m leaving behind is the anxiety, the measuring, and the false binaries that have been preventing me from trusting what’s already real. The difference is trust: trusting that cycles actually complete, that growth actually happens, that balance actually exists, without my constant vigilance proving it.
Guiding Incantation:
I leave behind the need to re-prove what’s already complete
I release the measuring that never shows enough
I surrender the false choice between extremes
What’s finished is finished, what’s growing is growing, what’s balanced is balanced
I trust what’s real without needing to test it constantly
2025 keeps the anxiety, I carry forward the truth
Journal Prompts:
Reflection: What cycle or achievement from 2025 have I completed but refuse to let register as truly done?
Release: Where am I exhausting myself through constant evaluation instead of trusting that growth is happening?
Integration: What false binary have I been swinging between when integration has been available all along?
As you prepare to release what no longer serves and step into the new year, find more reflections at www.oldtownwitch.com.
