Timing is a very difficult issue to face with the Tarot, because the Tarot don't understand the concept of time. Time is a human creation, not a spiritual one. Time is also perceived differently by people. Even DATES are perceived differently by people! For example, to some people 3am is Monday night and to others who work early it's Tues morning already. Time is a human concept that is better left to humans to deal with.

Having said that, there is one aspect of time that the Tarot has a certain knowledge of, and that is the four seasons. The Tarot, through their suits, can understand that the season of Summer is represented by Cups, and that Winter is Swords, Spring is Wands, and Autumn is Pentacles. The problems is, how accurate can one really be? Well, say you do a reading and the client wants to know when the changes will happen. You would tell him/her that you can't be too accurate because the Tarot doesn't really know time, but you can tell them appx what season it will be, and they can work from there. So you reach into your deck and draw a card. If it's the Ace of Pentacles, you know that it'll be in the early part of fall/perhaps the tail end of summer. But if you pull out the King of Pentacles, you can say that it may be in the later part of fall trailing into the beginning of winter. Now you've given yourself a huge amount of time to work with and if you make the client understand that it's not certain, then you've also given yourself a cover.

Perhaps this is an OK method for doing it. I usually make the client understand that the Tarot doesn't understand time and then they lose interest, so I haven't really had to use this too much. There are readers out there that have a sure fire method for interpreting time and they swear by it. Everybody has a different method of interpreting time, just like everybody has a different method of interpreting Courts and Reversals. Here is an easy way for beginners to use the Cards to give you an appx time reference without too much headache. One should look around and try different methods to see which one works for them.

Good Luck!

Blessings,
Matt, CPTR