This is a walk-through of the 2026 Metaphysician’s Day Planner (MDP), highlighting new changes and edits from previous years’ MDPs and how I use my MDP. Just a reminder: If you’d like to order your 2026 MDP, go HERE.
But also, I’ve provided all the digital MS Word templates that I use to create the MDPs year to year so that you don’t even have to buy mine, but can build your own. You can download all the digital templates HERE.
My favorite part about the MDP offering is you choose your own cover art design. On THIS PAGE where you can find the template downloads, you’ll also find Dropbox links to download various cover art design options, or take the specs (you’ll find this in the MDP General Guide PDF) to design your own from scratch.
For my 2026 MDP, I’m going with this 15th century ink scroll Buddhist art of the Six Paramitas, which in Mahayana Buddhism often gets associated with the Six Bodhisattvas. This then inspired one of the journaling self-reflection page spreads that I added to this year’s MPD.
I would consider the very red cover design out of character for me. For the last three years I went with very blue choices, and heck, didn’t even get all that creative this year for my 2025 cover. I just thought, hey, this worked for 2024, I’m just going to re-use it for 2025.
NOTE: we will be out of the country and without access to our email from November 22nd to December 10th. We will process any orders received during this time by December 12th. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Apologies for any inconvenience.
The Metaphysician’s Day Planner (MDP) is going to continue, at least for another year, though for 2026, as a “Lite” scaled back offering. It’s $17 for the personalized day planner customized with your natal chart and 2026 solar returns chart, e-delivered to your e-mail address as a digital file (PDF). We recommend using Lulu.com (not sponsored) a third-party print-on-demand site to print the physical spiral-bound copy of your MDP.
A few weeks ago I announced that we were retiring the annual Metaphysician’s Day Planner offering, after nine consecutive years of making them, each one custom-made to order with your birth chart and that year’s solar return chart. Plus the companion Metaphysician’s Guide that comes with the year ahead’s astrological forecasts, auspicious dates, inauspicious dates, and the dates to notable astrological or astronomical events.
Although we won’t be selling and making them anymore, we also didn’t want to leave you in a lurch, especially since we acknowledge that many of you have come to rely on it year after year. First, thank you so, so very much for your support over so many years. That’s amazing! Second, thank you for your understanding, patience, and sympathies that it’s just no longer feasible for us to be doing this, as our process is entirely manual and “old school” in this new world of everything getting generated instantly by digital automation.
You’re probably quite familiar with the “For Dummies” learning series that were popularized in the 90s. The book series published by Wiley & Sons de-mystifies difficult subjects and is known for accessible, easy-to-understand, plainspoken writing. Wiley could not have chosen a better author for the task than my dear friend Charles Harrington.
Although the “For Dummies” series catches a kitschy rep, this is in all seriousness a legit, no-nonsense, superb beginner’s book on tarot and oracle decks — and I love the dual coverage this compact yet comprehensive book packs for you.
Just a note for those who might be interested: the “Learning the Opening of the Key” video and workbook course from 9 years ago is now freely available.
You’ll first want to click onto the below hyperlinked page to download the workbook PDF and all supplemental materials:
This Chariot card took me 11 months to complete. Well no that’s not a fair representation. What I mean is I started the first draft of this card almost a year ago, and then just… stalled. (Funny enough, for a Chariot card…)
It’s still not done done, but it is a complete first draft. For every single card, I think I’m done, and then a few days later, sometimes weeks later, I happen to glance at it and suddenly spot egregious problems I need to fix.
“Le Despote Africain.” Upright, the keyword is Dissension, or Discord, and in reverse, it’s Arrogance.
Grimaud’s Etteilla III associates Card 21 with Rehoboam, the legendary 10th century BCE son of King Solomon who divided the previously united Kingdom of Israel into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, and who imposed harsh policies and burdens on the people.
Kinda fun to see the two Chariot cards side by side for comparison. On the left is from my Spirit Keeper’s Tarot deck, Revelation Edition. It’s philosophically fascinating how the slightest little change makes the biggest difference.
In the SKT, the line drawing pre-color is in black, thickness 7. For the Etteilla, line drawings are done in brown or midnight blue, thickness 4 or 5. Look at the dramatic difference just that one little change makes.
Random photos of my Spirit Keeper’s Tarot deck, Revelation Edition, because I didn’t know what else to use as images for this blogged reflection…
I think it was in 2022 that I first realized what it is I was witnessing: the tarot community as I’ve come to know it was dying, though it was also making way for the rise of something else.
Archangel of Mysteries, Key 13: The Reaper, and The Defector (Eight of Chalices) from the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, Revelation Edition
The “Dying Internet” Theory
First, tarot trends don’t happen in a vacuum, immune to sociopolitical movements. In fact, we can often tie tarot trends to exactly what’s happening in the global mainstream society. Which is why we’ll start by laying the foundation and address the trending theory of a “dying internet.”
There’s this speculative idea that’s been whispered (or maybe more than whispered as of late) in tech circles here in Silicon Valley about how an organic, people-driven internet that echoes physical society is being replaced by manufactured template content and occupied by bots, more and more being generated by AI rather than written from scratch by a human, resulting in decaying authenticity and homogenization. As they put it, “the internet is dying.” It’s a slow, systemic collapse of feral, original human-authored (can’t even believe we now have to clarify) content being outrun by outsourced content mills, ad-driven clickbait drowning out the authentic individualized voices, monoculture, fake engagement, faked popularity, and more and more paywalls.
The theory isn’t so much saying the internet is dying dying, but rather, the internet as Gen Xers and Millennials have become familiar with is quietly fading away and morphing into something that will be unrecognizable to us. What was refreshingly democratizing about the world wide web is what’s dying.
A “Dying” Niche Tarot Community
I think I need to explain myself here. It’s not that I think the tarot, as a niche interest and esoteric study, is dying or will ever die. That will always reinvent itself and persist. It’s the form of the niche tarot community as those of my generation have known it that’s dying and soon to reincarnate into something we may find unrecognizable.
When the tarot first went online (at least as I recall and per my personal participation) back in the 90s, it was almost entirely conversational. We were discussing tarot, and often in a very nerdy, niche way. We were engaging in dialogue, debating, debunking, sharing, and not merely broadcasting canned information about it.
I feel like discourse used to be more in-depth, whereas now, online content about tarot is keyed to quick consumer consumption, because if you don’t, then your content doesn’t generate high engagement, whereas when you do play the SEO game, your content rises to the top. We’re rewarding homogenization.
And again, this isn’t something that shifted overnight. Any of us who’ve been here a bit have watched it happen right under our noses. Many have griped about it, especially back when the online tarot community was still more conversational. Nowadays there’s no more griping or controversial “drama,” no more raw TMI personal ramblings, because it’s all highly-edited strategically produced vanilla content keyed to generate ad revenue, rather than for sincere interpersonal discourse. The disintegration and morphing into the (to me) unrecognizable didn’t happen like a Tower moment; oh no, it’s been slow, gradual, in a normal wear-and-tear sort of way.
Botanical Dreams Oracle by Lynn Araujo and Catrin Welz-Stein
I partook in this thought leadership workshop and learned about the five categories of questions to ask for more effective, strategic decision-making. Being me and having the interests I do, of course I immediately connected these learnings to tarot, I Ching, and in general divinatory readings.
Teachers in nearly every divinatory tradition or system talk at length about the importance of how you ask and frame questions for divination. The quality of answers you receive — be that in strategic leadership, personal development, or divination – is directly influenced by the clarity, precision, and intention behind the questions you’re asking.
Apothecary Spirits Oracle by Eric Maille, Michael Anthony, and Thomas Witholt
A well-framed question acts like a lens. It brings your focus to what truly matters, and in the case of readings, hones the focus narrowly on what it is you most want or need to know. The better your question, the more noise will get filtered out of the reading result, enhancing meaningful insight.
Thinking about how to frame questions through the principles of these five categories is really helpful, I think. Hence, this share.
In an executive leadership workshop I attended, I learned about identity capital and how people leaders need to help their teams cultivate identity capital. It’s a concept popularized in The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, which in short summary is the collection of professional and personal assets that define why you’re great. This is subdivided into four categories: (1) skills and credentials, (2) social networks, (3) life experiences, and (4) personal qualities.
Identity capital is what sets you apart in your marketplace or industry. It attracts more opportunities, builds your credibility, and empowers you to be more persuasive. Even when headhunters don’t consciously realize it, they’re looking for candidates with identity capital in abundance. Those who stand out in competitive environments are the ones who are rich with these assets.
I found the workshop useful, so I want to share what I learned. And of course I thought, how fun would it be to combine those professional development learnings with divination as a tool for self-reflection.
Below is a free downloadable Identity Capital Workbook.
This is here because blog posts need to be accompanied by images, as you very well know. I typed into ChatGPT the following prompt: “Create an image that is an artistic expression of the [__one-word summary of main occupation, e.g., author, attorney, artist, etc.__] [__name__] based on the published works they’re most known for, public persona and platform, and publicly accessible information about this individual.” This prompt might generate text only, in which case your next prompt will be “Create an image that is an artistic expression of [__name__] based on the foregoing analysis and assessment.” Left image is what ChatGPT produced when I used my legal name and profession of attorney; right image is what it produced for the author Benebell Wen.
Long before AI came on the scene, I had already been wondering if maybe psychic ability in humans wasn’t as woo as we thought, and really, it’s just a rare few people’s brains being able to process “big data” they were somehow downloading from a collective unconscious, spot patterns, and synthesize that data in a way that now appears to the average person as predictive or supernatural.
These algorithms that seem to know exactly what we want to see, who we are, our preferences, core identity, innermost wants and values mirror what people often say about psychics and mediums– “She [the psychic] knows me better than I know myself!”
I believe clairvoyance, clairsentience, and claircognizance are simply functions we have yet to fully understand in a clear, practical way. But really at the heart of it, it’s just cognitive science and pattern recognition, much like what powers AI.
benebell wen 