I highly recommend this blog post titled Three Ways To Accurately Predict When Events Will Happen. I think it’s very much worth a read for anyone interested in determining timing of events when reading cards, particularly tarot.

I don’t have a whole lot of experience with timing, but the approach I’ve mostly used is very direct: build timing into the question. “Will X happen soon?” “Is Y going to occur in the next six months?” Or state up front that this reading is valid for Z months. For example, when I first read playing cards I followed a technique where the reading is considered valid for a month at most.

Lenormand cards have their own approach to timing. There are astrological associations that can be used, such as the Fish being a Pisces card, which translates to anytime mid-March through mid-April. (I think the associations very more with Lenormand than with tarot.) The Rider usually indicates something that will be happening soon, like two to three days. The Clover, card number 2, is the classic two days/weeks/months. I read the Moon as a card that indicates “soon.”

Playing cards can also have timing associations which vary even more. The red 2’s are more traditional timing cards that can indicate a time duration of two, whether that’s days, weeks, months or years. Some people use astrological associations with the cards too, or suit timing assignments as the linked article describes for tarot suits.

A reader I know shared something she was taught about timing. The gist is that if you looked down at a traveling train, you could see the stops it has to make along the way, and where those are in relation to the destination; but you don’t know the exact times each stop will be visited. Only the order in which they will and must occur before getting to the end of the route. Timing is the same way, the sequence of events can be determined but it’s harder to pinpoint “when.”

This makes a lot of sense to me, especially for events further away in time. And I think this reflects the fact that intuition or the subconscious would be the best judge of time. If it can determine the events that will be occuring in a questioner’s life, then perhaps it can make a best guess on how long each of those events will take. All of this can be added to determine a final time period for the goal to occur or destination to be reached, and then this can be communicated to the conscious mind in the form of a card that jumps out at the reader.

Hopefully I’ll have more experience to write about Lenormand timing, at least, in the near future. I do have some techniques for this, but I’ll save them for another day. Meanwhile, I encourage my readers again to check out that tarot timing article.