What exactly is in the cards for 2009?

Good morning and welcome to the fifth day of the New Year, as good a day as any to look at where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going and why we’re in this hand basket.

Like the Chinese curse that wishes for us to live in “interesting times,” last year gave us a “dynamic” real estate industry with “a strong buyer’s market” and caused many Americans to really focus on saving for the future.

Entropy, little apathy

There was much entropy and atrophy but little apathy and less sympathy in 2008. Everything from the cost of the daily special at the local diner to the latte prices at your corner coffee shop seemed dependent on some mystical, global economic voodoo, making everything difficult, confusing and complicated.

With such a complex past, The Daily Progress went complex to divine the future: We consulted the Renaissance tarot card deck at facade.com, using the apropos “twisted path” method, with which the Web site promised “insight into the path ahead and the choices you must make.” We tested it on the one question to which the answer is certainly known: Will the Meadowcreek Parkway be built?

The first tarot card, 6 of Slaves-reversed, notes our fear of failure or success of the parkway. The second card, Death, promises the end of an old situation. The third card, Knight of Staves, shows us unable to focus on the task at hand while the fourth card, 7 of Cups, represents unrealistic and vain hopes with dependence on external and supernatural help. The final card, our destination, is Temperance Reversed, which promises excess and imbalance.

In other words, we’re afraid to make a decision because we have too many personal axes to grind so that only God can get the road built and it’s not in His capital improvement budget.

That sounded about right, so we applied the tarot to two other major issues facing us in 2009 — water and money.

As for developing a real water plan to keep us viable into the future, we pulled the King of Cups-reversed (ineffectual and unsteady organization), followed by another King of Cups-reversed (melancholy inertia and greedy preoccupation). Add those with The Sun-reversed (haunting memories of times passed) and The Hanged Man-reversed (self-imposed confinement and masochism), we find our final watery fate is the 10 of Swords (ruin and calamity).

In short, enjoy every glass of water!

Hey, enough bad news! Certainly, the economic front will provide promise, an uplifting development to which we may look ever forward throughout the year. So what financial fate is in store for us?

‘Final fate’

The first card, The King of Coins-reversed, represents greedy people preoccupied with money being influenced by the 3 of Staves, an achievement attained after long effort that becomes a source of pride. On top of that comes The Magician, a sweet-talking miracle worker who may be either sage or charlatan.

Combine the greedy, self-satisfied populace with the smooth-talker and the ever-changing aspect of The Moon card and we wind up with our “final fate,” which, in this case, is … Death.

Hey, that’s not happy! I will not start the New Year without goodness and light, dang it. Dealer, give me another card!

Ah, the Ace of Coins, promising material riches and spiritual richness for all of us in 2009: That’s more like it.

Next year we’ll use the Hannah Montana in Disney World Tarot Deck and work on that water plan.