Welcome to 2025, a Nine Collective Year
on humanity, being of service, solitude, completion, and more
Happy New Year!
Regardless of whether or not you observe January 1st as the beginning of a new year, congratulations! You’ve crossed an energetic threshold. Allow yourself a moment here to take a deep breath, shimmy your shoulders, and attempt a small smile. You made it. You’re here.
Welcome to 2025, a nine year (2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 9), the final spin in the collective cycle we’ve been spiraling through since 2017. This is The Wrap-Up, The Last Hurrah, The Final Go Around, The Victory Lap, and The Hard-Won Reward. After an intense eight year, which brought hard knocks, power struggles, immeasurable joy, and unplumbable grief, the nine year offers us different and new perspectives, as well as opportunities for reflection and redirection.
In the tarot, nine is represented by The Hermit and The Moon: mature, wise, stoic energies that tend to go within or away, led by the light of their own lamps, staying deeply and devotedly present, and fully integrating their lessons into wisdom before re-emerging to share. Nine also weaves its way through the minor arcana: the stroll through the well-tended garden (pentacles), the final efforts to cross the finish line (wands), the wishes made that are coming true (cups), and the thorny things that keep us up at night (swords).
Here, you’ll find an exploration of nine energy and what it could bring to 2025 through four keywords: Humanity, Service, Solitude and Completion, boyued by excerpts from T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, a poem which feels deeply tied to the energy of nine, but also of 2025, specifically. Tucked under these umbrellas are thematic predictions, current events, spells and practices to try, food for thought, and more. I hope that it is useful to you today, and every day of this year. It is also too long for your email inbox, so please click through to Substack to read in full, and engage in the comments if you feel called or inclined.
This information is for the collective energy—external forces that effect us all. If you’d like to calculate your own personal yearly cycle, simply add the day and month of your birth to the year 2025. For example, if your birthday is today, January 1st, you’re in the second year of your current nine-year cycle (1 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 5 = 11, 1 + 1 = 2).
[Please note that I reduce doubled digit numbers like 11 and 22 to their root numbers when working with yearly cycles, so please calculate and read accordingly.]
Additional resources for your year ahead:
📆: DAILY DIGITS: A 2025 Agenda for Magical Makers
🎧: Call Your Coven is back! Listen to January 2025: Shedding Season
Nine is Humanity
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!1
Nine (9) is the number of populations, communities, the masses, interconnectedness, and the All, and has quite severe potential pitfalls of misandry, martyrdom, and savior behavior. Rounding out the spiral of building block numbers, nine encompasses collective energy at its largest scale, ruling over humanity as a whole—what ties us together, and what keeps us from co-existing.
Throughout 2025, I believe we’ll see highlighted themes of world leaders, the global economy, imports, exports, industry standards, tarriffs, immigration, travel, tourism, border crises, genocides, hostile takeovers, ceasefires, peace agreements, lawmakers and laws of the land, The Establishment, journalism and news, integration (or lack thereof) of AI, separation (or lack thereof) of church and state, progression and regression.
If nine’s archetype is The Humanitarian, who trusts the wisdom of their own experiences, while holding space for contrasting ways of being, then we must also hold space for its opposite: The Egoist, who pushes their worldviews on others, lacking the critical aspects of respect that allow groups of people to live harmoniously, but differently.
The world stage seems quite set right now for the latter to flourish, especially in the United States, which will ring in the new year with the second term of President Donald J. Trump (whose first term was in the first year of this cycle, 2017, and whose presidential numbers, 45-47, reduce to 9-11). Winning on a Republican ticket with campaign promises of America First!, and already packing his cabinet and collaborators with extremists and billionaires, Trump stokes fear and rewards the few over the many, which are both aspects of the number nine.
His most staunch supporters are already starting to clash with his appointees, specifically when it comes to immigration, visas, and the industries that employ foreign workers. On the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, prominent MAGA influencers are squabbling with X’s owner, and member of Trump’s inner circle, Elon Musk, and former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, over the appointment of Indian American Sririam Krishnan to spearhead government AI initiatives, and the future of H-1B employment visas.
[If you can stand to engage with this story further, Taylor Lorenz wrote a great piece on it for User Mag.2]
The number nine also rules belief systems, philosophy, religion, and mythology, which are all deeply important to the spiritual health and narrative history of the human race. 2025 could have us reconsidering the ways in which we tell the stories of who we are, what we believe in, and how we choose to chronicle those records.
The Humanitarian has perpetually thrown themself head first into the spiral of life experience, fought their way through trials and tribulations, secured the “reward” (the ninth step of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey)3, and has made their way back home to share their treasures. But unlike Campbell’s mono-myth, which has long been proclaimed as a universal template for patriarchal storytelling, The Humanitarian has left behind delusions of independence and linear heroism, and instead honor the diverse ecosystem that birthed them, humbly coming home to offer their newfound wisdom to the whole.
In a brilliant essay called “How to Go Home: On Resisting a Very English Hero’s Journey,” Ellie Robins ponders the usefulness of Campbell’s mythological structure, noting how many stories have been cut from the cultural canon because they do not fit the mold. (Unsurprisingly, most of these myths center women, gender non-conforming folks, and other magical beings living on the margins of society.) After wrestling with her internalization of these narratives, which led her down a harrowing trip to her own underworld, Robins eventually surfaced with a new understanding:
Heroism is a story that elevates one person above the fray, which is to say above the ecology of living things. It’s a form of literary solipsism, in which most people’s fates don’t matter, so long as the hero triumphs. Odysseus’s story helped to enshrine the political mentality (and the physical geography) of colonialism, as well as a sort of emotional colonialism, in which the is-ness of all things and the web of relations that link them is shunted for the greatness of one.4
Visionary, science-fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin could offer Robins, and us, another, more inclusive way of looking at narrative structures. Her piece “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,”—which begins with a scathing critique of the ballooned workweek of the late 1980s—redefines the hero myth as a story of action and violence, and posits the bag of a gatherer might be a better metaphor for a story than the hunter’s sword or arrow.
“In [the bag], as in all fiction,” she writes, “there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too… and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.”5
LeGuin’s methods, which are much more aligned with the expansive nature of the number nine, allow for each individual being, stone and sapling to contribute to the story. Similarly, the Humanitarian does not need to be the best or the brightest, even when they might be, for they know that they are just a single branch on a much larger and more significant tree.
Putting Principles into Practice: Observe if humanitarian themes pop up for you, whether through events in your own life, media or figures that you’re drawn to, or even how you receive spiritual messages. Read about an area of spirituality that has always interested you, but that you’ve never explored, or even one that you have felt resistance towards in the past. See if you can open your mind and see past the minutiae to the sum of its parts. Notice where you may be centering your own experience over that of others. Investigate what greater philosophical questions or themes might be at play in any given situation, even if you disagree with the way the message is being delivered.
THE MATHEMATICAL MAGIC OF NINE AND 2025
Did you know, if you add 9 to any number, and do the math to simplify it to a single digit, you’ll end up with the original number added to 9? It’s like the 9 just disappears within the equation. For example: 9 + 5 = 14. If you reduce further, you’ll see that 1 + 4 = 5, which was the original number added to 9. Voila!
This means, every month this year has a core number of its calendar numeral. January is the 1st month of the year, and when added to 2025, it remains a 1 overall month (1+2+0+2+5 = 10, 1+0 = 1). It also means that everyone’s personal chart placement of the Public Persona number will match their personal Yearly Cycle number in 2025. You can read more about this placement, how to calculate yours, and what it might mean for your year ahead, in my final post of 2024:
Another fun fact: A few weeks ago I was tagged in a Discord conversation by a community member, who shared that 2025 is the only square year most of us will see in our lifetimes (45 x 45 or 45²). The last was 1936 (44 x 44), the next will be 2116 (46 x 46). I thought it was interesting that 45 also reduces to 9 (4+5 = 9), which doesn’t happen for all of the square years (1936 was a 1 year, but 44 reduces to 8), but will happen for the next one (2116 is also a 1 year, and 46 reduces to 1)!
Neat, huh?
Nine is Service
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.6
Nine is a mental number, and emphasizes the brain through learning, sagacity, perceptiveness, grappling with paradox, and using one’s natural skills and gifts in service to the community. But remember, while nine carries roll up your sleeves energy, it knows that the way to wisdom does not just live in the mind alone. All of the embodiment work we did in 2024 will need to come with us into the new year, as we continue to honor our gut, and our body’s unique and universal needs, so we can move forward from a place of embodiment, integrity and care.
In The Witch’s Book of Numbers, I share about a spiritual download I received about the ouroboros, an ancient symbol of a snake eating its tail; an infinite, painful cycle. Reasoning that if the stories about our own inner divinity are true, then so must be our access to the whole. We must be able to eat the fruit of the infamous Tree of Knowledge. The answer? Yes, we really can know it all. But—and this is a big but—the more we know, the harder it is to hold.
“It’s not easy to hold all of the complexities and nuances of someone or something,” I muse. “Part of what makes us each so unique is our inherent holographic multifaceted nature. Of course, when we bump up against this in others or while chasing down philosophical rabbit holes, it can get quite difficult to comprehend. The more we know it seems, the less it makes sense. The great thinkers of history knew this as well, yet they continued to unravel and be awed by the mysteries.”7
Culturally, 2025 could see new and burgeoning conversations about the value and necessity of higher learning, shifts in culture and attendance at colleges and universities, the importance of learning a trade, the roles of mentors, teachers, role models, and students, who the keepers of wisdom are, institutions of research, libraries, volunteer opportunities, and collective efforts.
This year, you may find yourself being drawn to intellectual pursuits, and opportunities to work with new mentors or teachers. You may also discover you have become the mentor or teacher! Regardless of whether or not you enroll in a structured class, honor when and how your hard-won knowledge and study becomes wisdom. Share what you’re learning with the curiosity and enthusiasm of a child. If there are children in your life, see what they might have to teach you.
Be sure to also consider why you are learning, why you are putting energy into expansion, and what exactly you plan to do with all of your newfound knowledge. We often think of service as actions that make others feel supported or more at ease, like offering to give someone a ride to the airport, or doing the dishes when it’s your partner’s turn but they have a busy day. However, nine would also like us to expand the definition of service to include learning, reminding us that our efforts allow us to connect with our communities through direct care-taking or problem-solving actions, teaching others and sharing our expertise, and continuing to grow in order to keep up with societies everchanging needs.
Putting Principles into Practice: Indulge your brain with teasers, puzzles, and riddles! Learn about a new philosophy or way of being. Work with flourine or ametrine. Call up a friend and tell them about something neat you’ve learned. Volunteer at a local organization. Join a club or donate your time towards an initiative you care about. Do something kind or helpful for someone else. Pay for someone’s gas or groceries or pay it forward in a way that is meaningful to you. A little generosity of spirit will go a long way for all involved.
Nine is Solitude
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.8
Nine is a number of seclusion, privacy and privateness, and sacred spaces. On the other side of the coin though are avoidance, isolation, and loneliness.
The Hermit, our tarot archetype for 2025, is one of energetic flux, of the ritual rythyms of retreat and re-emergence. They hold dear the experience of running away to the woods, cocooning in darkness, and devoting oneself to whatever is fueling their innermost, divine spark. And while they must rejoin society at some point or another, for the most part, like Emily Dickinson wrote in a letter to Elizabeth Holland, regarding a recent household move, the Hermit is “out with lanterns, looking for myself.”9
There is much to be said for the fertility and fecundity of working in the dark. Of traversing the void, and growing in the womb. The space in which creativity—life—flourishes. In the Northern Hemisphere, the calendrical new year greets us in the depths of winter, when nature is barren and at rest. Perhaps then The Hermit is the perfect ally for us every year, but especially in 2025, please heed its warning: Do not rush. Trust your own timing, process, wisdom, and creative spirit. Stay centered with your eyes on your own paper. Do not share before you are ready. After all, the astrological new year doesn’t kick off until March.
On the other hand, do not mistake the gifts of solitude with the pitfalls of isolation. Nine is a number of community and togetherness. It wants us to always be considering how we are part of a larger whole, even if we live in a remote area, are chronically ill or are needing to take other health procautions, or just aren’t the biggest fans of other people (which, fair). And finding ways to feel connected, even if just to one other person, has reached a cultural tipping point during this current, pandemic-heavy cycle of nine years.
In 2023, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, issued an advisory regarding what he refers to as a public health epidemic, writing, “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.”10 And beyond physical, spiritual and emotional damage, loneliness and isolation are proven to have massive economic and financial impacts as well.
2025 could see continued changes to how and where we gather, including the shifting landscapes of social media platforms and other online spaces, and battles around protections and rights to privacy.
I have found immense freedom and joy in online spaces, both as myself and anonymously. I’ve connected with audiences of readers, listeners and clients, joined and grown communities on Discord and Instagram, shared my creative work on websites, Substack and AO3. Hell, I met my best friends on Tumblr.com! And I know I’m not alone in seeing how the internet has rapidly and wildly altered our ability to connect with folks on a global scale.
“I believe that digital spaces have a vital part to play — not only in the resistance, but in our everyday lives,” writes
, in “if the internet is home, where do we live?,” a recent essay for her publication, . “How wondrous, that we can just shoot off messages to other people across the country and around the world and have them instantly seen and responded to? The ability to do this is a gift.”In last year’s newsletter on the collective eight year, I warned against submitting to the ways in which surveillance culture seeks to keep us from our deepest desires, and I think that rings true for this year as well. Keep connecting with others over shared interests and pleasures. Divest from algorithms and make your own online spaces. Protect your right to privacy through VPNs, screennames, pennames, and other means. Become a paid pal here at swimming in the soup, and join The Soup™ Discord server (hint, hint, wink, wink!).
Whatever you decided to do, enjoy a year of flowing between sacred alone time, and quality connections with others. Bask in the conundrum of being part of a Whole that’s made up of Individuals. Take pleasure in both darkness and light.
Putting Principles into Practice: Reconnect with a friend or loved one you’ve fallen out of touch with. Get to know your neighbors. Protect your peace. Go on a solo retreat. Start writing in a diary. Sit in meditation for longer than you have before. Delete a social media account that no longer aligns with your current self or values. Join a new space with like-minded individuals. Take a few different personality or typing quizzes to learn new things about yourself. Write a new biography or mission statement. Spend time with your reflection. Scrapbook or put together a physical (or digital) photo album. Hold rose quartz.
Big Events at the Beginning and the Mid-Point of the Current Collective Cycle (2017 and 2021, respectively)
Trump’s first term.
“Fake news.”
The Women’s March.
The toppling of Confederate monuments and the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Opioid epidemic.
Hurricanes and wildfires.
AI advancements.
Brexit.
The Rohingrya Crisis.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
Harvey Weinstein allegations and the #MeToo movement.
202113 :
Biden’s first term.
January 6th insurrection.
U.S. Military Withdraws from Afghanistan and the Taliban regains power.
COVID-19 Vaccines.
Oprah interviews Meghan and Harry after their move to the United States.
Simone Biles withdraws from Tokyo Olympics.
Historic heatwaves.
Texas freezes.
#FreeBritney.
Cargo ship stuck in Suez Canal.
2025:
Trump’s second term.
The rest is yet to be written…
Nine is Completion
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.14
Nine, and it’s sacred shape, the spiral, denotes the ending of a cycle, wrapping things up and letting them go. It can be a sobering energy, but one of great maturity, composure and conviction. It both basks in a job well done, and remembers that this too shall pass. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the otherwise—it’s all temporary. This is the year to go for broke, leave it all on the floor, and let what wants to die off, die off.
Even in cultures with loving and supportive practices around loss and grief, death and dying are difficult life experiences. But Western culture is so incredibly death-averse—while also being abhorrently violent—that we lack any collective relief or understanding at all. How could we? So many of our cornerstones are built on graveyards, both literal and metaphorical.
Still, nine reminds us that the cycle is never-ending. We’ve been here before. Perhaps under different circumstances, but as there’s nothing new under the sun, and even our very particles were once contributing to some other life-form or force entirely, maybe it’s not so different after all. Remember, after radical rest comes rebirth, resuscitation, and renewal. Death creates space for birth.
Maria Popova, author of The Marginalian, begins an essay called, “The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration,” with a poignant point:
“Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation between two world systems, periods in which humanity loses the ability to comprehend itself and collapses into chaos in order to rebuild itself around a new organizing principle — there are such times in every human life, times when the entire system seems to cave in and curl up into a catatonia of anguish and confusion, difficult yet necessary for our growth.”15
ICYMI:
📆: DAILY DIGITS: A 2025 Agenda for Magical Makers
🎧: Call Your Coven is back! Listen to January 2025: Shedding Season
💍: Marriage By the Numbers: Planning Your Wedding Using Numerology
Last year, I wrote a short grimoire called, Spells for the Spiral. In it, there are nine bespoke practices—one for each number of the building block numbers. While nine’s spell is a simmer pot recipe called Letting Things Simmer, I feel that 2025 vibes more with the offering for the number four: Funerals for Everyone. You’ll find it in full, for free, a new year’s gift from me to you. If you’d like to snag the whole spellbook, you can purchase it here.
Funerals for Everyone
A variation on a release or cord-cutting spell, performing an energetic funeral can be a potent way of laying to rest old selves, habits, practices, relationships, and situations. It is natural for things to run their course, but we humans are not always so good with goodbyes. Luckily, there’s magic for that!
For this short ritual, you’ll need:
A bathtub or other quiet, cozy space
A eulogy of sorts, either borrowed or written
Optional bath salts, herbs, candles, crystals, or other magical (water safe) tools that align with the colors and themes of death and rebirth
Considering your situation, intentions and desired results, decide if you’d like to include a eulogy or blessing. This can be something you write yourself or borrowed from a spiritual or meaningful text.
Fill your bathtub with warm water, adding any bath salts or herbs you’d like to work with. Place candles or crystals around the bath as desired.
Clear your energy before stepping into the bath with Florida Water, through visualization, or another simple action like clapping 3x and sweeping your hands around your auric field.
Get into the bath, giving yourself as long as you need to relax and sink into your center.
Once you’re grounded and ready, begin to focus on whatever it is that you’re cutting cords with. Be present with the feelings that arise and visualize them leaving your body and being absorbed by the healing waters that surround you.
Read your eulogy or blessing aloud. You may also want to state your intentions or desired results here as well.
Move through your ceremony in whatever way feels good, asking any guides, angels or ancestors to aid in your process of separation and clearing. You may also light your candles and hold your crystals, or repeat comforting mantras.
Imagine the water holding both you and whatever you’re releasing, together for a final time. Say goodbye and let the water carry everything down the drain.
Visualize warm light filling all of the emptied spaces within you. Call all of your energy back to yourself. Give thanks.
So be it, so it is.
Remember, after radical rest comes rebirth, resuscitation, and renewal.
Putting Principles into Practice: Cultivate practices around letting things go, closing chapters, and surrendering to new beginnings. Commit to leaving some negative relationship, habit, or situation behind. Wrap up unfinished business. Work with lemon balm to relieve stress and headache. Rejoice in your wins and move forward from your losses. Reminisce on the full cycle experienced. Start to make plans for the future. Bless and give away clothes, belongings, and spiritual tools that no longer resonate. Consider what chapter of your life is coming to an end and how you can meet it with more grace.
MAY THIS YEAR BRING US ALL INTO DEEPER RELATIONSHIPS WITH OURSELVES AND THOSE AROUND US! MAY WE CONTINUE TO SOW SEEDS OF INTERCONNECTED CARE AND JOY! MAY YOU DEVOTE YOURSELF TO THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN! MAY WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO WALK AWAY FROM THAT WHICH NO LONGER SERVES! SO BE IT, SO IT IS!
Until next time, just keep swimming!
xx, bee
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Poems, 1909–1925. Faber & Faber Limited, 1925.
Lorenz, T. “A MAGA civil war is breaking out.” User Mag. 28 December 2024.
“2017 Events.” History.com. December 11, 2017.
Adams, C. "17 stories that defined 2017.” CBSNews.com. December 20, 2017.
"2021 Events.” History.com. December 20, 2021.
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Poems, 1909–1925. Faber & Faber Limited, 1925.
Scolnick, R. The Witch’s Book of Numbers. Hierophant Publishing, 2022.
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Poems, 1909–1925. Faber & Faber Limited, 1925.
Dickinson, E. A letter to Elizabeth Holland. About 20 January 1856.
Campbell, J. (2008). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library.
Robins, E. (2022, November 3). How to Go Home: On Resisting a Very English Hero. LitHub. September 10, 2023.
LeGuin, U. K. (1989). The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In Dancing at the Edge of the World. Grove Press.
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Poems, 1909–1925. Faber & Faber Limited, 1925.
Popova, M. “The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration.” The Marginalian. 24 December 2024.