Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1543536
N obody consults a tarot reader when things are going well. The whole enterprise — the shuffling, the spread, the theatrical flip of a gilded card — is predicated on a tremor, some ambient dread that the rational mind cannot quite metabolize. Yet, here we are, in the opening months of a year that numerologists designate a Universal Year 1 (add it up: 2+0+2+6=10, 1+0=1), a cosmic factory reset that corresponds to The Magician in the tarot's Major Arcana. It's the ultimate manifestation card. The one that says: You are the spell. This message resonates with particular force right now, when geopolitical anxiety is ambient noise and institutional faith is at a generational low. But then, the pattern is as old as civilization itself — and considerably stranger than we tend to admit. Babylonian priests charted the heavens to counsel kings. Newspaper horoscope columns were born, almost suspiciously, in 1930 — the pit of the Great Depression — when the Sunday Express commissioned a natal chart for the newborn Princess Margaret. And, lest we forget the most glamorous chapter in the genre: Nancy Reagan regularly consulted her personal astrologer, Joan Quigley, whose planetary calculations reportedly dictated Air Force One's departure times and the scheduling of Reagan's summit with Gorbachev. When the stakes are existential, the stars get a seat at the table. What distinguishes this moment, though, is the aesthetic vocabulary. The metaphysical has been absorbed so thoroughly into fashion and design that it no longer carries even a whiff of patchouli — though you can, if you're so inclined, hire an Etsy witch to hex your ex for five bucks. On the runways, the integration is more refined. Maria Grazia Chiuri built Dior's Spring 2021 haute couture collection entirely around the imagery of the tarot, specifically the Visconti-Sforza, one of the most complete surviving decks from the 15th century in Milan, commissioning Matteo Garrone to film models as The High Priestess, Justice, and The Devil winding through a Tuscan castle. It was a homecoming of sorts: Christian Dior himself was superstitious, refusing to show a collection without first receiving a reading. Elsewhere, Gabriela Hearst themed her entire Spring 2026 ready-to-wear around the Major Arcana's 22 cards, her finale look embodying the surrender of The Hanged Man. The message from the runways is unambiguous: mysticism is the new minimalism. That sensibility is filtering well beyond the front row. Spiritualist Ariana, a clairvoyant and tarot reader who has practiced for more than three decades from her Psychic Center in Brookfield, Connecticut, has noticed a marked shift in her clientele. "People are not coming to me because they want to be told what happens next. They're coming because they feel stuck," she says. "What a reading does, when it's done with honesty, is cut through the fear and blockages. I always tell my clients: I'm not here to say what you want to hear. I'm here to show you what's already inside you. The cards give you the permission to trust yourself." Her observation tracks with the data. A 2024 Harris Poll found that 70 percent of Americans now believe in astrology, and 61 percent agree it provides comfort in uncertain times. The appeal, crucially, is not doctrinal. It is the opposite: an inward turn, a rejection of received dogma in favor of something bespoke and self-directed. Crystals on the nightstand. A birth chart saved to the home screen. A monthly Co-Star subscription for ongoing self-care. The astrologers themselves see something rarer still in the year ahead. "When Saturn and Neptune move together, and Pluto and Uranus change signs at the same time, astrology reads it as a collective reset," says New York astrologer Rebecca Gordon. "Pluto's move into Aquarius alone marks a 20-year shift in what society values. Layer in Saturn and Neptune entering Aries, and you get a rare moment where ideals demand action. That's why 2026 feels like a threshold. We're stepping out of an old system and into something we haven't fully named yet." In a year the cosmos has branded with the number one for leadership, individuality, and the audacity of beginning again, perhaps the braver reading is this: The card was never about the future. It was always about the person bold enough to turn it over. the cards WE'RE DEALT When the world wobbles, we reach for the deck. Here's why 2026 is the year of the personal oracle. By Paul Jebara XIX. The Sun. Chanel metal-and-resin minaudière, at select Chanel boutiques.