We can see the seasons of the year visually in the four Minor Arcana Suits: Cups (Water), Wands (Fire), Pentacles (Earth) and Swords (Air). Traditionally, these suits and elements are connected to the seasons and cardinal directions as follows:
Earth – Suit of Pentacles – North Node – Winter
Air – Suit of Swords – East Node – Spring
Water – Suit of Cups – South Node – Summer
Fire – Suit of Wands – West Node – Fall
So, in this way the energy of the Tarot works with the four cardinal directions. As someone who has celebrated sabbats and called in the four cardinal directions, I find this approach my favorite because it connects the tarot to magickal work. And systems are things I can build my own thing from.
Other people create their own associations with the Tarot suits and the seasons. Many people see the brown hues of the pentacle cards as Fall, the icy colors of swords as Winter, the buds of wands and growth as Spring, or the watery cups as Summer time fun.
But why even do this?
Well, you can use the seasons for predictive timing. An abundance of pentacle cards might tell me that Winter will be the time when the event in question happens.
Other readers use the Astrological System created by the Golden Dawn. Based on the signs of the zodiac and their connection to each card, technically you could work with this system for a more complex sense of timing throughout the year. Here is a great thread about this (see BrightCrazyStar): http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=2650245#post2650245
And here is what she says (in case you don’t want to travel) – which is based off of the Golden Dawn System of Tarot:
Spring
2,3,4, Wands (Aries)
5,6,7 Pents (Taurus)
8,9,10 Swords (Gemini)
Summer
2,3,4 Cups (Cancer)
5,6,7 Wands (Leo)
8,9,10 Pents (Virgo)
Fall
2,3,4 Swords (Libra)
5,6,7 Cups (Scorpio)
8,9,10 Wands (Sagittarius)
Winter
2,3,4 Pents (Capricorn)
5,6,7 Swords (Aquarius)
8,9,10 Cups (Pisces)
The reasons for this are each has a attribute that is to a decan of the signs of the zodiac. The genera formula, which you can verify above is this”
2,3,4 of a suit is cardinal of the zodiacal element
5,6,7 of a suit is fixed of the zodiacal element
8,9,10 of a suit is mutable of the zodiacal element
Do you even want to predict stuff?
Of course, this all depends on whether or not you even use prediction in readings! I personally believe that we have some control over what happens in life, so I limit predictive readings and proceed with caution. I might make a prediction if I am getting very specific insights from the cards.
In order to do this, I like to use a combination of Tarot suits and numbers. As I associate Swords with Spring, if someone asks me, “When will I get a new job,” of course our first discussion is about how you makin’ this happen — but if the cards show an Ace of Pentacles (new job!) surrounded by Swords (Spring season), I would say that it’s likely to happen soon!
I also look to repeated numbers on the cards. A repeating 2 could indicate the event happening 2 months from now. In all cases, I trust my judgement and intuition to interpret what I see.
But what about the Major Arcana cards?
What does this say about timing?
I talked about seasons withe the Minor Arcana, but what about the Major Arcana, you ask? What can these cards tell me about timing?
As these are considered the cards of SPIRIT – I would say that there are either: Major life lessons and experiences that you need to have – or – situations that you have no control of — and that will not allow us to see the timing of when something will happen.
So – as you can see, there are lots of ways to think about how the Tarot correlates to the seasons and use them in your readings!