Reversed Cards

Some readers turn it the right way up and carry on. Some read it exactly as it fell. Both are proper ways to read tarot, and people have been arguing about it for well over two hundred years. This page gives you the history, the five ways reversed cards are usually read, how I read them, and an exercise to help you find your own way.

Where reversals came from

The first person to write reversed meanings down was a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Alliette, who went by the name Etteilla. In a book published in 1783 he gave meanings for the cards in the upright position and the reversed position, and he told his readers to turn part of the deck around while shuffling so that cards would come out both ways.

In 1910 Arthur Edward Waite published The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the companion book to the Rider Waite Smith deck. Under every card he gave an upright meaning and a reversed meaning. Many of his reversed meanings are little more than the opposite of the upright one, and a few seem to have nothing to do with the card at all. Because his deck became the deck most people learn on, reversals came along with it and became standard practice.

Since then readers have split. Many read reversals in every spread. Plenty of respected readers never use them, and read everything upright for their whole working lives. Neither side is wrong.

The five ways reversals are read

To keep this simple, I will use one card through all five: the Empress.

Upright, the Empress is abundance and nurture. She sits in a field of ripe wheat with a stream running beside her, and she is the mother, the garden, creativity, the body at ease.

Here is what she can mean upside down.

1. Blocked. The energy of the card is there, but something is in the way of it. The Empress reversed is the nurture that is not getting through, the creative project that will not start, the garden that should be growing and is not.

2. Turned inward. The card is happening inside you rather than out in the world. The Empress reversed can be the person who looks after everybody and has quietly stopped looking after themselves.

3. Too much or too little. The card is out of balance. Too much Empress is smothering, the love that will not let anyone grow up. Too little is depletion, running on empty reserves and giving from a cup that has gone dry.

4. Delayed. What the card describes is on its way but has not arrived, or someone is holding it off. The Empress reversed can be abundance that is coming, slowly, once the ground is ready.

5. The opposite. The upright meaning flips. The Empress reversed becomes barrenness, neglect, the field left bare. This is the oldest approach and the bluntest, and most modern readers use it sparingly.

You can see that the first four are close cousins. They all say the card's energy is present and something has happened to it. Only the fifth says the energy has gone.

How I read them

I read reversals, and my starting point is the first approach. A reversed card still carries its own energy, but that energy is constrained, wounded, or held back from its full expression. Reversed does not mean wrong.

From there, the position of the card in the spread tells me which of the cousins it is. A reversed card in a position about your inner life often points inward. A reversed card in a future position is often delayed. A reversed card next to other cards of plenty or of exhaustion is often too much or too little.

I use the opposite reading rarely, and never on the heavy cards. A reversed Tower is still a mirror. So is a reversed Death. Nothing in the deck hands down a sentence, and turning a card upside down does not change that.

Should you use them?

Learn the cards upright first. Seventy eight pictures are plenty to be going on with, and reversals ask you to hold two readings of every card at once.

When the pictures are familiar, try adding reversals in. Some people find they bring a whole extra layer to a reading. Others find the spread already says everything through the position of each card and the cards around it, and stay upright for good. Both are fine.

The one rule that matters: be consistent within a reading. Decide before you shuffle whether you are reading reversals, and hold to it until the spread is finished. Turning a card the right way up because you did not like how it fell is the same as asking the question again because you did not like the first answer.

The exercise: one card, five ways

Take one card you know well and lay it upright in front of you. Say out loud what it means.

Now turn it upside down. Read it through each of the five approaches in turn: blocked, turned inward, too much or too little, delayed, the opposite. Say each one out loud.

Notice which one feels true. Notice which one you resist. Then do the same with a card you do not know well, and watch how much the five approaches teach you about the upright card as well.

A week of that, one card a day, and you will know which way you read reversals. It may not be mine. That is fine too. You will be your own teacher.

If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.