Oopsie doopsie, this “2025 Year in Review” is coming so, so late. A bit emblematic of my 2025, though, which is anything online-related gets relegated to lowest priority. Eeps. It’s because this past year I’ve kept my work more local community oriented, and my focus more family oriented.

I find that too much gets lots in translation when it’s via social media. I notice how in person, we assume the best in people, but online, we assume the worst. In person, we delight in how similar we actually are; but social media would have you think we can never get along.

2025 has been a year that demanded discernment. Can you discern truth from falsity, what’s natural and what’s edited, what is authenticated and what is entirely AI generated. Economic fissures between the have’s and the have-not’s are widening, which in turn is stoking civil unrest, all while we ravage our environment.

If the tarot numerology of years entertains you, 2025 was a Hermit year (2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9, Key 9: The Hermit), which I read as the themes, archetypes, and messages to guide us through the year. And so The Hermit as the year card was very much about discernment, how to wisely navigate the winter night.

In I Ching lunisolar calendar correspondences, 2025 was associated with Hexagram 44, Improper Meeting, about seductive power that brings downfall. The line text references a wind that moves unseen, but is pervasive everywhere, entering quietly, but corrupting loudly.

Hexagram 44 is also about illusion and misdirection, both things not appearing as they seem, where appearances are deceiving, and also tricks of the attention, to manipulate your perception. The hexagram is associated with the legend of a temptress concubine (and demon fox spirit), Su Daji, who corrupts the Shang dynasty, giving rise to the Zhou.

In folksy fortune-telling, you would say that Hexagram 44 prognosticates corrupt people corrupting through seductive persuasion, and a sign that hidden powers are at play. Gossip does more damage than it should. Nefarious influences chip cracks in the foundation and it’s the beginning of a major decline.

The above shows one popular approach to I Ching forecasting with its correspondences to the lunar-solar calendar. Thus, if we do conversions to the Gregorian calendar, Line 1 of Hexagram 44 prognosticated prevailing energies during February and March of 2025, all the way to Line 6, which shows energies we are still in at the moment, at least until the Lunar New Year when we transition into Fire Horse.

The somewhat cryptic-sounding text are the translations of the classical Chinese line text. Personally, I feel like these global forecasts have been scarily accurate.

The folk legend that Hexagram 44 is premised on is about a seductive concubine (who is actually a demon fox spirit sent by the Mother Goddess to bring the downfall of a corrupt king who offended her. or at least so goes the lore) and how the concubine and the king squander the kingdom’s resources to live in excessive opulence while the people starve. The Zhou are being oppressed by the ruling Shang. (This all ends up leading to a Zhou uprising and the overthrow of the Shang, and rise of the Zhou as a Golden Age, but now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)

Ultimately, the political lesson here is when you allow economic fissures, that divide between have’s and have-not’s, to widen inequitably, beyond justification, you’re going to get an uprising. What we thought we went through between 2019 to 2024 wasn’t it, oh no — those were just the initial rumblings letting us know the Big One is coming.

History is repeating itself, as it does. Talk to anyone whose eyes were on the stock market in 2025 and they’ll tell you it’s been an extraordinarily prosperous year of record gains (for those who were savvy enough to buy in to the right corporations…), but talk to anyone whose eyes are on the people and they’ll tell you it’s been rocky, good jobs are harder to come by, the price of necessities have shot out of reach, small businesses and sole proprietorships are barely keeping it together, and folks are feeling the instability.

Not unlike what happened to job opportunities during the Industrial Revolution, the AI Revolution is going to re-structure and also force us to re-think the job market, the very culture and philosophy of how we approach work. But first, it’s going to exacerbate that gap between the have’s and the have-not’s, the figurative landlord vs. the tenant, and the power differential between those who make decisions and those who follow instructions. As I watch myself type this out, I feel like a broken record and maybe you’re thinking that, too, because I’ve been saying it for several years already. The widening chasm is getting worse, not better. As a collective, we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. And for a lot of folks, considering how bad it already feels, that’s frightening.

And if we can digest the key learnings from the Industrial Revolution, then we are bracing ourselves for it to get worse before it gets better, and it only gets better if people form collectives, alliances, and push for better conditions. Skills that once were valued will become obsolete (replaced by machines), but what I think some people, especially in the creative fields, are getting wrong right now, is that truly innovative creativity will be even more valued. What’s being threatened is the 99%. The 1% cream of every crop isn’t going anywhere, but if the 99% doesn’t adapt to changing times, it’s gonna get rough. By the way, I’ll be the first to say that is NOT okay. The whole point of public policy is to offset “survival of the fittest” and find a way to make sure the 99% can thrive. Plus, there’s a fully self-interested motivation for that — when the 99% does not thrive, you get civil unrest, violence, and revolution.

A little something that has gone under-reported is how rapidly the environmental crisis is worsening. This past year, 2025, has been one of the costliest and deadliest years in terms of climate-related disasters. Heat waves and cyclones got deadly in Asia, wildfires blazed across North America, and if you ask me, I have a feeling Mother Nature is just getting started. And yet the few federal and state bills that we tried to get passed to get our carbon emissions under control were blocked by those very same corporations that earned billions extra this year. Again, we really should be studying history, esp. the Industrial Revolution, and taking notes. We have to push for more robust environmental regulation and reform.

While AI is certainly contributing to further increasing of carbon emissions and water consumption, let’s not be the type to use scapegoats, because really, it’s our 21st century lifestyle. So many of the folks going blue in the face from condemning AI have lifestyles that are contributing just as much to the problem. So instead of pointing fingers, it’s about everybody assembling together to agree to implement public policy, which yes, is going to have to regulate AI, but it’s also the way we excessively use our heaters and A/C, how the U.S. does not recycle properly, the way so many of us waste water for non-essentials, and our continued reliance on fossil fuels.

This is not to say AI is not a problem; it is, it’s one of many problems we need to find strategic, viable solutions for. Again, not unlike what happened during the Industrial Revolution.

In the same way the early 2020s saw right wing conservatives going more underground, 2025 marked a turning point of them coming back out of the woodwork, and progressive liberals having to now go underground.

It has been a year of marginalized communities going into hiding, and more pertinent to this platform, witchcraft and self-identifying witches, occultists, and pagans retreating back into the closet. Religious minorities have faced intensified hostility from Christian nationalists.

Immigrant families, fearful of ICE raids, have stayed indoors and canceled public cultural events. Among many extended family relatives and friends of friends, I’m often the only attorney they know, so even though I don’t focus on immigration law, I’ve been inundated from all sides this past year with immigration law related questions. I’ve witnessed firsthand the magnitude of fear and anxiety, not just among undocumented immigrants, but even legal immigrants with visas are scared.

For a while, at least here in progressive California, you would see pronouns in corporate email signature blocks, but that has quietly gone away. (Mine remains, because it’s a way to signal to colleagues, if you’ve got something to report, you can come to me.) In fact, diversity, equity, and inclusion has just… without a word… receded into obscurity. Corporate commitments to DEI were dropped. Budgets for DEI programs got cut.

In academia, government funding for scientific innovation that doesn’t directly further corporate profits just… stopped. Funding for public healthcare got slashed in ways that are just ludicrous for a country that calls itself a First World nation. Liberal arts, arts and culture in general, is in a state of flux. (“Winter is coming,” you could say.)

In the end, 2025 has been a year of teaching us discernment. It has exposed fractures within systems that are ever widening into irreconcilable gaps, irreconcilable because instead of debating ideas like the civil, educated people I thought we aspired to be, we’re attacking people and getting personal, going after people’s livelihood and even lives. I see how much bad faith misrepresentation of people’s actual beliefs and ideas are pushed out to taint the pool.

Not that any of this is new to 2025. It’s been going on for years. It’s just disappointing that it continued into 2025. We point at the top for being authoritarian, but everybody is being a little bit authoritarian if you think about it. The whole “you better agree with me 100% or else I will smear your good name” is still going strong in 2025. The extent to which even individuals on the internet try to censor and police each other is incredulous.

But for some more positive news, back to community bonds. I was a Guest of Honor headliner at ConVocation this year in Michigan. You can read my recap of the event HERE. It was my first time attending a pagan event in the Midwest and I loved it! I love the community, the genuine passion, and the sincere valuing of inclusivity.

I made some friends who are now going to be friends for life. I observed how a conference event can achieve long-term sustainability by being not-for-profit in mission, community-oriented, and run by a committee of volunteers. Sure, nothing is without its social dramas and hiccups, but when all is said and done, how ConVocation operates is a beautiful and noble thing. I am so grateful for being invited to join this last year.

As for personal projects, you know that Etteilla deck I’ve been working on forever now? In 2025, I finished… two cards. Yep. I know. Funny how the two cards I worked on this past year could very well be a two-card reading about my progress. Geez.

At present, I’ve completed the trumps, less The Fool card, which is numbered Card 78, so I figure I’ll complete my drafting with The Fool. The ten Coin pips and ten Sword pips are done, but have only a couple of the Wands and Cups completed, and I haven’t done a single court card yet.

I write the Etteilla guidebook alongside drafting the card illustrations, so I’ve finished the intro chapters plus the card meaning entries for the cards I’ve done.

I’m entering 2026 with a work-in-progress for the Five of Wands. Let’s see how many cards I manage to finish in 2026. =/

I only posted six videos in 2025, kicking the year off with the fun, light topic of “What Happens When We Die” and ending with a two-part piece that I’m currently expanding into a more in-depth online course that will come with a workbook. I was hoping to get that inner alchemy course done by end of year, but guess we’ll have to wait for a 2026 release.

This past year I haven’t been as active online, and – my apologies – not very responsive to email or direct message inquiries either. The hubby James keeps up with the abelldelivers inbox, whereas I check my benebell email like once a month, maybe, and then when I do, the volume of unread messages is just daunting, so I end up only spot-reading and inadvertently missing super-important stuff. =(

I’ve been offering the Metaphysician’s Day Planner every year for the last decade, and this year, initially I had decided to stop the offering altogether, but not wanting to leave anyone hanging, released all the planner section templates for free download to anybody who wanted to customize and create their own yearly day planner.

But I still had to create the 2026 planner for myself. And then after I finished making my own personal 2026 planner-organizer, Hubby was like, dude, just offer it, you never know who it’s gonna be useful to. It’s not like people have to  buy it. So if they don’t want it, they don’t want it. But if they are willing to pay you to “do the work” and assemble the 2026 planner-organizer, then why not?

And that’s how you got, first, the “Create Your Own Metaphysician’s Day Planner: Downloadable Templates” bank of zip files that you can download totally for free and use, mix and match, modify, do whatever you want to for making your own yearly planner-organizers.

But then came the “2026 Metaphysician’s Day Planner $17” for those who want my finished 2026 day planner file, customized with their birth chart and solar return chart, for easy printing. This is the more no-fuss approach, where you don’t have to sort out how to customize the template files.

And then because this 2026 version does differ from past MDPs offered, I also posted a walk-through “About the 2026 Metaphysician’s Day Planner.”

Speaking of marginalized communities going underground, here’s one minor yet significant example of it. Originally I was going to go with that 15th century ink on silk scroll Buddhist painting of bodhisattvas, but at the last minute, before printing out my 2026 day planner, I decided this cover art showed too much of my personality. Since I do carry my day planner to the office, and given what I’ve been intuiting to be the current social climate and state of things, it felt safer to go with something really generic and uninteresting, rather than something that might stand out and share too much about myself. So I went with the more generic cover you see above to the right, though it still has coded significance. The original 19th century artwork that cover is based on is titled “Solomon’s Seal.”

As many of you who’ve read past personal ramblings by me know already, in 2020 after the mother-in-law passed away, the father-in-law had to move in with us. I thought I knew what a big cultural difference there was between the Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese, but man, I was not. prepared. for just how BIG a cultural difference there is between us. Having to navigate that cultural difference on the daily, compounded by generational and lifestyle differences, under my own roof, has been, quite frankly, one of the most difficult life experiences I have ever had to deal with. How Hubby was raised vs. how I was raised, we mind as well have been from different planets.

Observing father-son dynamics has also been insightful. It’s totally not the same as father-daughter or mother-daughter dynamics. Which, yeah, I know, state the obvious, but no seriously. It’s nuts how different the relationships are. At least how I’ve observed it, there’s always this quiet competitive tension of who is the “head of the household” nevermind the patriarchy of it. Or maybe it’s just like a masculinity thing, I dunno, I really don’t. All I know is from my vantage point, it’s like this irrational hierarchy, authority, dominance-independence fight/rivalry that makes no logical sense to me.

Old World working class fatherhood seems to also be very different. Growing up the son doesn’t receive any sentimentality or even a “good job, son!” There’s zero emotional validation. Discipline was dispensed by the belt. The only communication of emotions are reactive anger and violence. Harsh words get exchanged and never a follow-up sorry. The apology is silent and assumed.

Whereas a father with three daughters is just more nurturing, more protective, and softer. I don’t imagine daughters really trying to assert dominance over their dads the way I guess sons do in certain sorts of scenarios. The father-in-law was a poor farmer turned soldier under a Communist regime; my dad is through and through a scholar-philosopher scientist type, raised during a time when Taiwan was at its most prosperous, before getting his doctorate here in the US. Navigating the resulting personality and lifestyle differences due to those very different backgrounds has also been eye-opening for me.

We are only 5 days in to the new calendar year and already I see it’s going to be a hectic, busy, and demanding year, but hopefully, as a global collective, it’s going to be one armed with 2025’s lessons learned.

I hope we are learning to see with clarity, better able to discern what is truth and what is intended to mislead, and among those of us actively utilizing our intuition, may we continue to stay a few steps ahead of the fray.