“Temporal Landmarks are significant points in time that promote a break from the past and a sense of renewal moving forward. As a result, they encourage a ‘fresh start’ and increased motivation towards aspirational behaviours and goals.” (quoted by Michal Shum at modelthinkers.com)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Accurate “tarot timing” consists of precisely forecasting the date of occurrence for events or correctly foretelling the punctual onset of specific circumstances; it is one of the last obstacles to divinatory credibility and one that stubbornly resists rule-making. T.S. Eliot may have said “Every moment is a fresh beginning,” but the diviner’s task is to figure out which one is the most relevant to the matter at hand. (I should mention here that astrological timing via transits and progressions has its own more definitive criteria.)

I’ve written in the past about the mystical premise that all human experience unfolds in the “Eternal Now,” and any intimations of the future are merely vague projections of our mental apparatus. But competent divination can render those fuzzy hints more disciplined, such that – with a little help from self-motivation – they can serve as the creative imagination that underlies the “making of our own reality.” Nevertheless, I’ve conducted numerous experiments that sought to devise a systematic way to assign increments of time to the Minor Arcana and the court cards (more on the Major Arcana below), but I’ve never been satisfied with their reliability and repeatability; there are just too many variables – including external prerogatives – that can change the trajectory of any predicted event track. Consequently, I now speak only in terms of likely culmination across an approximate span of time (e.g. “sooner rather than later”) instead of trying to pinpoint firm landmarks.

Some readers consider the exalted archetypes of the Major Arcana to transcend the boundaries of time and space; they are overarching and persistent rather than cyclical or intermittent in their operation, so they don’t submit to timing conventions. However, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn made a comprehensive attempt to align all of the zodiacal trump cards with the “natural” zodiac, beginning with the Emperor (Aries) on the Spring Equinox and ending with the Moon (Pisces) in February-March of the following year. They also strove to affix the majority of the court and minor cards to the monthly decanates of the Chaldean zodiac, starting with the 2 of Wands and Queen of Wands on or about the 20th of March.

From the standpoint of predicting events within an actual reading, none of this stands up to rigorous scrutiny when brought to bear on the scope of a particular question; unless tied to a schedule of some kind, such events seldom follow a rigid timeline and, within reason, can be scattered all over the temporal landscape. As every tarot-reader knows, our efforts must first establish “if” before beginning to contemplate “when,” and there are no guarantees that one will follow the other in an orderly fashion.

That brings me to the crux of the matter. Once a querent becomes convinced that something is likely to occur, the inevitable follow-up question is “When will it arrive?” Lately I’ve been thinking that the best answer is to state that the cards will only show an incipient opportunity or an environment that is conducive to the event; if it’s going to happen as described the querent must still act on cue to either induce its appearance if it is desirable or suppress its development if it isn’t. We all have a role to play in crafting our own destiny, either by choosing to help steer it or by just sitting in the road and letting it run over us.

My belief is that, one way or another, we set ourselves up for the events and circumstances we encounter in life through the commission or omission of a crucial act. Nothing positive can happen without the affirmative engagement of the querent at some level of consciousness, but anything negative is possible if the individual fails to foresee it and correct its course through remedial action. (Call it an unfortunate consequence of entropy: things will only get worse if we don’t remain alert to the need for intervention.) As I’ve said before, wishful thinking is not enough in the first instance, nor are good intentions sufficient in the second case. It may sound like I’m ducking the issue with a sly “You figure it out,” but what I’m trying to do is allot responsibility for the outcome where it will do the most good. After all, tarot deals most effectively with the “What, Why, Who and How” of prognostication and only touches lightly on the potential “Where and When,” if at all. It’s up to the querent to make the most of any inklings it provides.