People often ask about timing, when will this or that happen. Naturally they do. If and When are the perennial questions, and the Tarot reader has various means and methods for having a pretty reasonable stab at it.
Zodiac knowledge is a huge help here.
Tarot is not astrology, but it contains many astrological archetypes, correlations and references, and they walk and breathe alive in us.
Image by Ciro Marchetti.
The 22 Major Arcana cards include 12 ‘planetary cards’. Drawing one of these helps the reader have a pretty decent stab at predicting in which month a future event may occur…assuming that is, that the event seems likely to occur.
The Emperor card= Aries = March 21-April 19
The Hierophant = Taurus = April 20-May 20
The Lovers=Gemini= May 21-June 20
The Chariot=Cancer =June 21-July 22
Strength=Leo =July 23-August 22
The Hermit=Virgo= August 23-September 22
Justice= Libra= September 23-October 22
Death=Scorpio= October 23-November 21
Temperance=Sagittarius = November 22-December 21
The Devil=Capricorn= December 22 -January 19
The Star =Aquarius=January 20-February 18
The Moon=Pisces = February 19-March 20
More here
It is usually pretty reliable.
Poor Il Matrimonio was waiting for a call from the hospital. His mother passed away, 18 October, peacefully in hospital, a stroke aged 92, and he was waiting for the hospital down in Ashford to issue the medical certificate of death, when he would be making the drive down again from Lancashire to collect it, and go to see the registrar.
He went down, and the hospital indicated the medical certificate of death would not be issued, available for collection before sometime the following week, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The death could not be registered before then, and he ran other necessary errands and came back.
It is a 5 hour drive if conditions are good, Il Matrimonio would be staying away overnight, and he expected to be going down again on Monday evening, collecting the medical certificate on Tuesday.
But I drew the Tower card and said, no, I thought he would go on Tuesday evening, collecting the medical certificate on Wednesday.
Image from The Golden Tarot by Kat Black, permission of US Games Systems.
Why did I think Tuesday, and not Monday?
Monday=High Priestess
Tuesday=Tower (The Norse God of War, Tew or Tyr, also Mars)
Wednesday-Magician
Thursday = Wheel of Fortune
Friday=The Empress
Saturday =The World
Sunday=The Sun.
When reading the cards for this purpose, you focus only on the time meanings. You discount the usual meanings, although as it happens, The Tower can indeed, amongst many other things, many not pleasant, indicate a stroke, although this one, happily, could not have been more merciful.
Il Matrimonio spoke with the hospital on Tuesday morning, was told the medical certificate had just that moment come in to the office, and he went down that evening, and collected the certificate on Wednesday morning.
Poor Il Matrimonio, he was glad to set off south again at last. Jobs to do. He was glad of that. Waiting and wondering is tiring and dispiriting at the best of times.
Here he is with his mother, in 1962, aged 9 and in hospital in Singapore. He had broken his arm falling out of a tree.
‘Oh, what have you done now?’ she said.
Indeed 🙂 And the physio was agony, he has told me, but look at them smiling, though he still has the scars. Mother and child.
Until next time 🙂
True Tarot Tales 
