Chapters do not start on New Year or on birthdays. They start when something ends quietly enough that you do not notice for weeks — and then one day the old routine simply does not fit. If something in your life has that feeling right now, hold it in mind and turn a card.
A new opportunity for material prosperity: new job, investment, or income source. The seed of abundance being planted.
Read against this new stretch, Ace of Pentacles puts the weight on opportunity and prosperity. Read against a beginning, a card describes what the new stretch will ask of you. Beginnings feel like freedom for about a week; after that they feel like a demand. Knowing which demand is coming is what turns an ending into a start.
The same card has an opposite face, and it is worth holding both. Missed opportunity, poor financial management, or excessive focus on material matters.
So sit with the question you arrived with — What is actually beginning here? — and notice which of the two readings you flinched at. That flinch is the reading. It is the one piece of this page that came from you rather than from the deck, and it is the only piece that can change anything.
A door opens to prosperity. Plant this seed with care.
You do not get to choose when the chapter turns. You get to choose whether you walk in reading the page or looking backwards over your shoulder.