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Tarot Reflections

  March 01, 2003

Teresa Michelsen is a tarot reader and instructor who has been reading and studying tarot for 25 years. She teaches beginning and intermediate tarot courses and workshops on-line, through her Tarot Adventures and Tarot Explorations study groups.

Teresa has published many articles on tarot on the worldwide web and in American Tarot Association publications. Her first book, Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads is now available from Llewellyn, and she is currently working on her second book, The Practical Art of Tarot Reading, which will be published in 2004.

Teresa is a Certified Tarot Master and Secretary of the American Tarot Association. Her website, Tarot Moon, is a favorite destination of tarot readers who come for her lessons and articles on tarot and fully illustrated examples of completed tarot readings.

Teresa lives near Seattle, Washington with her husband Niels and black cat Shadow. In addition to her tarot activities, she holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering, and works out of her home as an environmental consultant.

This question has come in from a couple of readers lately, so this will be our featured tarot topic of the month.  If you have questions for Tarot Forum, please send them to Thrysse@tarotmoon.com, and we’ll cover them in future issues.

Q. How do I answer a question that asks for timing information?

A. Timing questions are some of the most difficult that tarot readers face, and this article is intended to provide you with a wide variety of tools for handling them. These tools range from qualitative and general approaches to highly specific timing methods. The goal of the practice exercises provided is to give you an opportunity to try out all of these methods and find one that works for you.

Since these are only practice readings, I encourage you to try each method, even those that you are initially uncomfortable with. You may find that your views about a potential approach change after trying it, and that your comfort level with timing questions may increase as you become a more experienced and confident reader, and as you have more practice with them. If after trying them you still don't like them, you need never use them again – but at least you know what methods are available and you can return to them later if you need them.

Narrative

The first approach is the most straight-forward and also very useful for readers who do not wish to use numeric or deterministic approaches to timing. This approach is great with one-card readings, and simply answers the question "when" with a narrative answer also starting with "when". For example, if the client asks "When will I get a raise and promotion?" the answer might be "When you are able to develop a better relationship with your boss" or "When you improve your communication skills" or "When you move to a different department." None of these answers predict a specific time when the event will occur, but they tell the client what they need to do to bring about the wished-for event, or what needs to happen first. In fact, if you wish, you can think of the original question with the "when" being replaced by "what do I need to do to…" or "what needs to happen before…," depending on whether or not the things that have to happen first are under the client's control or depend on outside factors.

One inherent problem with "When" questions is that they contain an assumption that the event will someday happen. For example, the question "When will John ask me to marry him?" assumes that John will ask her to marry him – which may or may not be a safe assumption. Although clients may often ask their questions this way, don't fall into these assumptions yourself. Reword the question, or be on the lookout for cards that imply that the event may not happen at all, or is very unlikely, or is too up in the air to predict whether it will or will not occur. These questions can still be handled as originally worded, as long as the reader is aware of this issue. For example, if you are doing a three-card reading and all three cards are reversed, you could say something like "This and this and this would need to happen in order for you to get a raise in your current job, but the chances of all these things happening are remote due to problems in each of these three areas – you either need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you may not ever get a raise if you stay in this job, or work very hard to overcome all these obstacles."

Exercise #1 – Do a one-card reading on the question "When will our family finally be able to afford a house of our own?" Use the narrative approach in answering the question.

Active/Passive

Active and passive cards can also be used in timing spreads to get an idea how quickly an issue may be resolved. This is an especially good method to use when the "when" question is just part of a larger question or reading. You can do the main reading first, then look at the cards as described below to get a sense of how quickly the issue will be resolved. Active suits are Wands and Swords, passive suits are Cups and Pentacles. Note that court cards can have elements of both – active courts are Knights and Kings, passive courts are Queens and Pages/Princesses, modified by their suit. Trumps are assigned to active or passive depending on the element or astrological sign with which they are associated, and some may be considered to be neutral. An example of how to use this method with a three-card spread is shown below:

Three active cards: Happening now or being resolved within a matter of days
Two active cards: Timeframe of weeks
One active card: Timeframe of months
No active cards: Timeframe of years

The specific numbers on the cards can be further used to provide a numeric range, if you wish. For example, a 3-card reading with the cards 2 of Pentacles, 4 of Cups, and 3 of Swords would equate to 2-4 months (one active card, numbers ranging from 2-4).

Exercise #2. Do a 3-card reading on the question "We need to sell our house, but the market isn't very good right now. Is there anything we can do to improve our chances, and how long might this take?" Use any spread of your choice or design, and use the active/passive approach described above to answer the "when" part of the question (with or without the numeric range).

Suits/Elements

This approach is similar to that described above, but uses the energy of the suits and associated elements to provide a timeframe estimate. This approach is especially good when you have only one "timing card" in a spread. This approach uses only the A-10 cards of the four suits as timing cards; the courts and trumps are dealt with differently, as described below. First the suits are ordered in terms of their volatility or permanence – you can choose any order that makes sense to you, for example switching Swords and Wands if you like. I chose this order intuitively, and by looking at the movement and speed of the horses in the Knights cards.

Swords: days
Wands: weeks
Cups: months
Pentacles: years
Courts: the timeframe depends entirely on the decisions or actions of the querent or another person, which have not been taken yet.
Trumps: will happen once the issues presented by the Trump is dealt with – no timeframe specified. These cards represent major life issues that may take anywhere from days to decades to resolve.

If you want to be specific, the numbers on the cards can used to give an indication of how many days, weeks, months, or years. As with any of the methods discussed in this chapter, reversals should also be examined, because these can represent obstacles to resolution of the issue. The timing only provides a potential for when things could happen, if any obstacles are removed. A spread that is mostly or entirely reversed may represent a situation in which the event being asked about may never happen or which has many obstacles to overcome. A card such as the Wheel of Fortune may indicate that random factors are influencing the outcome in unpredictable ways.

Exercise #3. Do a three-card reading on the question "I've been alone for three years after a difficult divorce and am ready to meet someone new. When will I find someone and what should I look for?" Use the following spread along with the timing approach described above to answer this question:

Card 1: What kind of person will make her happiest?
Card 2: What she needs to do to find this person
Card 3: How long this might take

Seasonal

The seasonal approach is another way of using the associations between suits and seasons. To use this method, you must first decide which season you associate with each suit – this may vary from deck to deck or you may choose to use the same associations with all decks. Here are the associations I most often use for readings:

Cups: Spring (water – spring rains, new growth, creativity)
Wands: Summer (fire – fullness of life, sunny, hot)
Swords: Autumn (air – cutting back, harvesting, planning for the winter)
Pentacles: Winter (earth – dormancy, putting down roots, quiet)

Using this method, the suit gives the season, and the number on the card gives the week of the season, all the way through the courts. Each season has 13 weeks, Ace-Queen. The Kings are traditionally considered transition cards, and indicate the cusp between seasons. In this method, only the minors are used. The Trumps represent major issues or events that cannot be easily timed, and are read narratively. Reversed cards may indicate a delay in the normal timeframe, and are sometimes read as one year delayed while the issue indicated by the card is worked out. It is important to recognize that this method is only capable of predicting timing for events that are likely to take place within the coming year.  Any event that may take more than one year to occur (and relationship questions usually fall in that category) should be explored using another method.

Exercise #4. Use the seasonal method above to answer the question "When would be the best time to ask Joanna to marry me?" Use the spread below or one of your choice:

Card 1: When would be the best time
Card 2: Why this would be a good time
Card 3: What he can do to have the best chance of success

Astrological

There are various approaches to timing that incorporate astrology, based on astrological associations with the cards.  In some systems, the minor cards represent specific planetary transits (e.g., Mars in Libra). Each card can therefore be associated with a certain timeframe when that transit will take place, of various durations depending on the planet and its transit time.  Similarly, certain trumps and court cards traditionally are associated with certain signs of the zodiac.  Some trumps are associated with planets, and if these planets are near other cards that indicate signs, a transit may be indicated by the combination of the planet and the sign.  Or, if a card associated with a planet is reversed, it could be that a retrograde period is indicated.  The Golden Dawn assigned all 360 degrees of the zodiac to the 2-10 cards of the minor arcana.  Courts, aces, and trumps are overlaid on these and rule larger parts of the year.  This system could also be used to determine a time of year when something is likely to happen.    

Because there are so many ways to associate tarot and astrology, it is helpful to have some basic knowledge of astrology before attempting one of these methods.  You may choose at that time to develop your own astrological associations with the cards, and your own system of combining them, or use one of the methods described above.

Deck-Specific

Certain deck designers have developed their own timing systems in which they assign their cards to certain days of the year (e.g., Ancestral Path) or certain periods of the year aligned with solstices and other natural cycles, such as the Celtic Wheel of the Year (e.g., Greenwood).  Whenever you acquire a new deck, it is worth checking to see what underlying systems, including timing or seasonal systems, the author may have attributed to the cards.

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