Timing with suits and numbers
Lesson 10 of 12 — the Arcana cartomancy guide
The deck’s rough clock: each suit a season and a speed, each number a count.
Key points
- Each suit carries a season: Diamonds spring, Hearts summer, Clubs autumn, Spades winter.
- Each suit carries a speed: Diamonds in hours or days, Clubs in days, Hearts in weeks, Spades in months.
- The number is the count: an Eight of Clubs suggests about eight days, a Nine of Hearts about nine weeks.
- Lay three to five cards for a timing question; the last card weighs most.
- Timing by cards is a lean and a season, never a date.
Readers have always been asked when, and the tradition answers with two clocks. The first is the seasons: Diamonds for spring, the quick season of new money and news; Hearts for summer, the full season of feeling; Clubs for autumn, the season of harvest and work; Spades for winter, the season of endurance. A reading heavy with one suit suggests the season it belongs to.
The second clock is speed, and it is more useful day to day. Diamonds are the fastest suit: hours or days, as news travels. Clubs are fast: days, as work gets done. Hearts are slow: weeks, as feeling ripens. Spades are the slowest: weeks, months, sometimes longer, as difficulty is worked through. The number on the card gives the count in that unit, so an Eight of Diamonds suggests about eight days and a Four of Spades about four months. Court cards suggest the timing depends on the person they describe.
For a timing question, lay a short line of three to five cards and let the suits set the scale, weighting the last card most. Then hold the answer loosely. The cards give a lean and a season. If a reading suggests something many years away, the old advice is to ask instead whether the thing will happen at all, and read that answer as more than a year, or as not in this chapter.
Practice
Ask when a specific thing you are waiting for is likely to move, lay three cards, and write the timing the suits and numbers suggest. Note the real date when it comes.