Timing and Place
Tarot images rarely point directly to an exact time or place, so readers convert them through correspondence systems such as the elements, the phases of the moon and the planets, and the more precise the conversion, the larger the margin of error.
Judging the time frame of a reading's outcome
Tarot cards are good at describing what happened, how things stand now and where they are heading, but the images themselves rarely give an exact point in time. To answer timing questions, you need help from other correspondence systems. Below are several common conversion methods. The further down the list, the larger the error and the narrower the range of use.
- Using the four elements to divide a day or the seasons: a day and the four seasons can each be split into four parts matched to Swords (dawn to noon / spring), Wands (noon to sunset / summer), Cups (sunset to midnight / autumn) and Pentacles (midnight to dawn / winter). In principle, any span of time that can be divided into four can be mapped onto this suit order. Different sources give somewhat different suit orders (some follow the order of the four worlds of the Kabbalah, some follow the element order of the first four signs of the zodiac, and some follow the alchemical pairing of the four qualities cold, hot, wet and dry). The results are broadly similar. Which order you use matters less than choosing one and sticking with it consistently.
- Using the four phases of the moon for shorter estimates: a lunar month (one cycle from new moon to new moon) can be cut roughly into four parts at the new moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter, matched to Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles. This narrows the time frame to "which part of the coming month." The method carries built-in error, since a lunar month does not divide neatly into four equal parts by days. Tell the querent in advance that this is only a rough range and not a prediction accurate to the day.
- Using planetary orbital periods for a rough time scale: if a card clearly corresponds to a particular planet (a Major Arcana card usually has exactly one; for number cards you can use the sephirah-planet correspondences of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, see Numbers in Tarot), you can borrow that planet's orbital period as a rough time scale for the matter: the Moon about 28 days, Mercury about 88 days, Venus about 224 days, Mars about 687 days (nearly two years), Jupiter about 12 years, Saturn about 29.5 years, Uranus about 84 years, Neptune about 165 years, Pluto about 248 years. The Sun borrows the earth's rotation or orbit and is read as one day or one year. The farther the planet is from the Sun, the longer the time span it stands for. If you draw a number card with no classical planetary correspondence (in the Kabbalistic system this usually means cards such as the Aces and Twos), the time scale worked out this way becomes too long to mean anything in practice. It can be read roughly as "not within any reasonably expected time frame," and there is no need to take it literally as several decades.
- Be careful with long-range timing: even if you know these conversion methods, it is not advisable to use them freely to answer long-range questions like "in which year and month will this happen?" First, the conversions have a large margin of error, and cards are not precision instruments for measuring the sky. Second, giving an answer that is too certain and too far off can leave the querent with the false impression that their fate is already fixed. What divination should really offer is help seeing the present clearly and adjusting strategy in time. The broad direction can stay fairly stable, while the specific steps should always be open to change. There is no need, and no good reason, to pretend to see what is settled decades ahead. This echoes the reminders about the limits of divination in The Ethics of Reading.
Judging place
Tarot images are not very good at pointing directly to a specific place name. There are three common supporting methods, listed from most to least reliable:
- Eliminating among candidates: first ask the querent to list the places they are considering, then draw one card (or one group of cards) for each option and compare which option the cards support more. This is the most common method and the least likely to go wrong. It hands the nearly impossible task of "listing every possible place" to the querent.
- Elemental correspondences for direction: use the correspondences between the four elements and the compass directions to judge a rough direction. This suits broad questions such as "which direction is better to move in," and does not work for pinning down a specific city.
- Associating from details in the image: look directly at the geographic features of the scene on the card and draw associations. Snowy mountains in the image suggest a cold, mountainous region. Open meadows and rivers suggest a mild, well-watered plain. An ocean in the background suggests a coastal area, and a desert suggests a hot, dry region. This kind of association suits qualitative questions such as "roughly what kind of environment is in that direction," and does not work for precise location.