Hi guys – it’s your sometimes blogger again. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to determine timing with Lenormand, so this post explains how to do a timing board with the cards. I may come back and edit because it might sound a bit confusing at first – though I assure you it is much easier to do than it is to read about.

First, do a regular reading, however you choose to do it – a full board of 36 cards, a Line of Nine, a Square, a Romany spread, or whatever you like. That will tell you what’s coming up.

So – you want to know when it’s going to happen? First, you’ll need to know what the cards mean. That may seem self-evident, but a lot of people forget that Lenormand still works by combinations as well as by separate cards – even in timing. If you remember that, it’s usually not too difficult to work out – and in most situations you do need to look at several cards to get a sense of the timing of an event. If you’re looking for news of love, the Heart, the Ring, the Gent, and the Lady will often give you clues. Lilies, too, if it’s about sexual love. And let’s not forget the Sun, Moon, and Stars for happiness, both emotionally and in a general sense.

When it’s about work – frequently the Anchor (the job or work itself), sometimes the Key or Tower (if you work alone the Key, for a large company, the Tower, if you do contracts, often both), usually the Bear (management and financial backing), sometimes the Fox (when you need to be especially alert, or when there’s office politicking going on), often the Ring (binding contracts), and occasionally the Moon, since that’s the determiner of fame, and of public reputation. In some work situations it’s the Lilles (Lilies in this context refer to family businesses, patronage, and organisations or companies that deal with social welfare in some form, but are usually not governmental). You’ll also want to look to any cards that represent your particular line of work – if you work with computers, Sun + Scythe is usually worth a glance. If you’re in the civil service, have a look at the Tower, and if you’re a barrister, then Tower + Whips are a good indicator. Musicians should look to the Stars and Whips, while writers should look to the Whips and Book. Folks in esoteric fields like astrology and card-reading – Book, Stars, and Moon. If you’re looking for public grant money, then take the Garden and Fish into account – and on it goes. Each situation will be individual, and you’ll need to make the call.

Home life can be the House, the Lilies, the Stork if you’re moving house, the Child if it’s about a child or children.

Travel is usualy the Ship or Stork. For health, look to the Tree. Upcoming unpleasantness in any area of life is often the Mice, Cross, or Clouds. Friends and social events are the Garden, the Bouquet, and the Dog, as a rule. When will you get news? Look to the Rider and the Letter. When will your visitors arrive? Look to the Bouquet. When will the phone call come? The Owls.

When will the divorce come through? Look for the Whips and Letter for any documents you’ll need to sign, and the Tower and the Scythe for the final dates. When will the baby come? Look for the Stork and the Child. When will you have good luck? Look to the Clover and Key; if it’s money luck, add in the Fish. When will the money get here? Look to the Fish, and if it’s by post, the Letter as well. When will it (whatever it is) end? Look to the Coffin.

You get the idea, and the list isn’t exhaustive – only you can know the ins and outs of your situation, and what cards are most likely to apply to it. Eventually you’ll have some personal card associations, too, and once you know the cards, you’ll probably be looking to several of them for the timing of an event, or to see the time period over which something will unfold.

A timing board isn’t the same as a predictive, or reading board. Do the predictive reading first, and if the situation is complex or depends on several factors, then it’s often a good idea to do a separate timing board to work out the whens.

In a time reading, you won’t be interpreting the cards except for the timing of the cards concerning the matter you’re looking at. I realise that’s a confusing sentence, so please bear with me here.

It works best if you do a timing board for an event once only. If you keep asking ‘when?’, eventually you’ll start getting contradictory answers. I keep my timing questions to once and once only for any given event (and always save a copy of the time reading), in the same way I’d cast a horary chart once and once only if I were using astrology to determine the timing of an event.

To throw a timing board, you shuffle the cards, cut them however you like, and lay them out in four rows of nine cards across each – you’ll be using the entire deck for this.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Consider each position on the board to be the ‘house’ of the card of the same number. Let me explain. We know that the Clover is the second card (it has the number ‘2′ right on it), and we know that the Clover means within 4 days in terms of timing. So if you were wanting to know when you’d get a new job, and the Anchor (work) fell in the House of the Clover (the second position in the reading), then the answer would be within 4 days. Count the cards all the way across before you go on to the next row – so the first row would have houses 1-9, the second would be 10-18, etc.

Make sense? You look for the ‘what’ cards in the ‘when’ spaces.

So here are the whens – remember, these are the spaces on the board, and we’re indicating them by the card names and numbers. The first space is the Rider’s space, the second space is the Clover’s space, the third space is the Ships’s space, the fourth space is the House’s space, etc. You look to the card that falls in the space for the what – but presumably you know the ‘what’ already, so you know which cards to look for. You look to the space the card falls in for the when. The list below is the when spaces.

1. Rider – within 2 days
2. Clover – within 4 days
3. Ship – within 3 years
4. House – in the morning
5. Tree – in 5 years
6. Clouds – in 6 years
7. Snake – in 7 years
8. Coffin – immediately
9. Bouquet – in the spring
10. Scythe – in the autumn
11. Whips – in 2 years
12. Owls – in October
13. Child – soon (within a month)
14. Fox – in December
15. Bear – in 10 – 20 years
16. Stars – at night
17. Storks – in February
18. Dog – in July
19. Tower – in 1 year
20. Garden – at noon
21. Mountain – in January
22. Paths – within 2 months
23. Mice – now
24. Heart – in August
25. Ring – forever, or not yet
26. Book – in March
27. Letter – in June
28. Gentleman – in April
29. Lady – in May
30. Lilies – in winter
31. Sun – in summer
32. Moon – in the evening
33. Key – in November
34. Fish – in 4 years
35. Anchor – in September
36. Cross – immediately

There you go. Remember, this is to lay out a board for when something is going to happen after you’ve already determined the prediction of what the event will be. So if you see, say, the Mountain in the Heart’s space in a timing board about a love affair, it doesn’t mean a blockage in feelings – it means January.

Some folks just pull one card for when, if it’s a simple question. And that works, too. The timing board is for situations like new job contracts, complicated personal situations, travel, house moves, etc. If it’s about work, for example, you can look at when you’ll hear from your prospective employer (Bear, Owls, Letter), when the contract will come through (Ring), when you may have to further your education in the course of the job (Book), when you’ll be travelling for work (Stork, Ship), when you’ll be getting paid (Fish), when you’ll have to be at an office or public workplace (Tower, Garden), etc.

For love readings, you’ll want to look at the Lady, Gentleman, Heart, Ring, Dog, Key (the Key is certainty), and likely a few other cards as well, like the Letter and the Owls for communication, and the Bouquet and Garden for spending time together.

For situations that depend on more than one card to tell you when events will unfold, this is a method I’ve found to be quite reliable. And I promise that once you try it, it won’t be near as confusing as it sounds from reading about it You’ll also likely be quite surprised by the accuracy, and the way each event seems to click into place in an orderly way.