Phoenix Rising
Transforming your inner landscape through the flames
Hot Wheels
Every year is ruled by a tarot card and every card is ruled by an element. In 2026 we’re spinning with the fiery of Wheel of Fortune and its spokes—the suit of wands.
As soon as we hit Aires season (a fire sign no less!), the saying burning the candle at both ends took on a whole new meaning. My creative output doubled, but so did the hours spent at both my day job and night job (aka tarot).
In the process of writing a book about the natural elements and their connection to the cards for my upcoming tarot retreat, I learned the very real difference between the elements as theoretical concepts and the impact they have on the body when you’re caught in the tilt-a-whirl of their season. While I wrote a 92-page book (🥹), bloodwork at a recent doctor’s appointment showed me that unbalanced fire energy was, quite literally, burning me up from the inside out.
Getting burned shows us when heat is too hot and where we might need an oven mitt, sunscreen, or a frank conversation to protect us as we tend to our inner flame.
In the tarot, the journey from the 1 to the 10 of wands is a reminder that the fiery final bundle of sticks is not what we’re expected to hold forever. The 10 teaches us what to use as kindling so we can return to the ace knowing how to direct our creative energy in a way that won’t burn us out.
The Wheel of Fortune and the wands ask:
What are we burning for in this life and how can we support ourselves when the flames get too hot?
Ring of fire
The Ring of Fire is a geologic zone in the Pacific Ocean that pops off more intensely than firecrackers on the 4th. It is the most volcanically and seismically active area in the world, home to 75% of volcanoes and 90% of all earthquakes.
As tectonic plates dive under one another, pressure builds until the pulsating heart of the volcano, the magma, is forced to the surface in a blazing eruption.
Fire energy can feel this way—our creativity, desire, passion, rage, and joy all erupt when they’ve been kept under wraps for too long.
Johnny Cash said it perfectly when he sang: Love is a burning thing / And it makes a fiery ring / Bound by wild desire / I fell into a ring of fire.
No one said following our passion, our fire, is easy. Like a volcanic eruption, what spews forth will completely recast the landscape. But the Wheel of Fortune teaches us that the fastest way through these moments of remaking is to keep on rolling through the flames.
In my book, Elemental Tarot: A somatic journey through earth, water, fire, air, and ether, I write about fire’s power to alter our inner and outer landscapes. It shows us what needs to be burned down before we can see the person we’re becoming through the flames.
Here is a little preview for you all 😊
The Flaming Heart
Of all the elements, fire has the power to transform the most rapidly. It incinerates the unnecessary and illuminates what needs to change. It is metamorphosis incarnate. Both destroyer and creator, fire takes any raw material and remakes it in the creative image of its flames.
Expansive, radiant, and powerful, many mythologies depict the theft of fire from the Gods to help humans survive. Without fire we could not easily nourish ourselves, keep warm, or transform the energetic center of a house into a home.
Fire purifies, burning away the excess, leaving only the potent, beating core of what is most essential.
In the body, the fire element is represented by our hearts. To do something “in a heartbeat” is to move like fire, quick and unapologetic, toward the object of one’s desire. Because of this rapid movement, both fire and our tickers need constant fuel to keep them alive.
Like a phoenix, torched for the very first time
When we finally give ourselves permission to burn through what no longer serves, we can be reborn like the phoenix.
A player in ancient Egyptian lore—the phoenix is a mythological bird associated with the worship of the sun and immorality. At the end of its 500 year life, it would build “a funeral pile of spices and aromatic gums, lighted the pile with the fanning of its wings, and was burned upon it, but from its ashes revived in the freshness of youth.“
In this numerological 10 year, a year of simultaneous endings and beginnings, how can we prepare our pyres? How can we offer what no longer sparks joy to the flames so we can transform as we take flight into the next season of our lives?
Freeing the Firebird Tarot Spread
What is ready to be burned?
How will I be transformed by the fire?
What will rise from the ashes?
Your claim to flame
Playing With Fire—Learn how to work with the fire-wands connection in your tarot practice.
The Summer Reset: 5 Things Every Chinese Medicine Doctor Wants You to do Right Now—Check out Dr. Felice Chan’s recommendations on how to stay balanced as we move into peak Yang/Fire energy in the northern hemisphere.
Tarot for the Wild Soul—Read No Bad Cards with Lindsay Mack’s new book. The cards are grouped in a way that’s breathing fresh air into my practice. “The Waiting Room: Tarot Cards for Liminal Seasons and Unclear Times” has been particularly potent.
Burning hot for all of you!
XO
ALTARU TAROT
A book!! Can't await to hear more about THAT (though I hope you've been able to find some rest ❤️🔥). This was, as always *chef's kiss* — the art selects (the Hot Wheels one is amazing), the music references, the themes...I love you weave all of this together and it works so well. The Summer Reset article I also enjoyed :)