Reversed cards

Shuffle a deck for long enough and some cards end up upside down. When one turns up that way in a reading, it's called reversed. What should you make of it?

The first thing to know is that you don't have to make anything of it at all.

Reversals are optional

Courtney Weber says it plainly: you don't have to read reversed cards. Many fine readers ignore them, and some deck designers mean their decks to be read upright only. Kim Huggens often leaves them out too. If you'd rather not use them, just turn any upside-down card the right way round as you lay it down.

If you want to avoid them entirely, keep every card facing the same way, and when you split the deck to shuffle, keep both halves facing the same way too. If you want them, turn one half round each time you split.

What matters most, Joan Bunning advises, is to decide one way or the other and stick with it for a while. Switching back and forth from reading to reading only confuses things.

In our own readings, each card has its own chance of coming out reversed. In your profile's tarot settings you can make that normal, lower, higher or never, or switch reversed cards off and let the reader judge from the other cards whether each one leans upright or reversed.

One card, both ways

Here is the Three of Pentacles, upright and then reversed. A stonemason stands on a bench, working on a church arch, while two others hold up the plans and look on.

Upright, it's skilled work, done with others and valued by them. Turn it over and readers find several different things in it. Those different things are the main ways of reading any reversal.

Four ways to read a reversal

Blocked or delayed. The card's energy is there but held back. Weber reads the Three of Pentacles reversed as plans put on hold. Bunning's version is that a reversed card's usual energy is at a low level, or needs to be.

Turned inward. Anthony Louis compares a reversed card to a planet going retrograde in a birth chart: the energy is more inward than outward. The upright card often shows something open and visible; reversed, the same card can point to something private. Here, that might be a quiet doubt about your own skill, while the outside world sees no problem at all.

Waning, or over. The upright situation may be ending, or already done with. The team on the church arch might be breaking up, or the project finishing. Bunning offers this image for the card: the team has changed direction.

Emphasised. Some readers take a reversal as a red flag that simply says "look here". Weber notes this works especially well when only one or two cards in a larger spread are reversed. The card means what it always means, only louder.

What to leave behind: "reversed means bad"

You'll find older books that treat a reversed card as the opposite of the upright one: good becomes bad, success becomes failure. Most modern readers find that too crude. Huggens points out the problem. If reversal always meant the opposite, the Ten of Swords, a picture of ruin, would turn into a good card every time it fell upside down.

Louis puts the better view well: a reversed card isn't necessarily negative. The card's essential meaning stays the same; what changes is how it's being experienced. A reversed King of Cups might be someone short on compassion, or someone with plenty who finds it hard to show.

How to choose between the readings

With four possible readings, how do you know which one applies? Amber Jayanti suggests weighing three things alongside the card itself: your question, the cards around it, and the position it falls in. A reversed card in the Recent Past position leans naturally towards "waning". In Your Self it leans towards "turned inward".

It also helps to count. Bunning notes that when most cards in a spread are upright, things are flowing freely and the situation is well defined. When many are reversed, energies are low and the situation hasn't taken shape yet. That can feel like being stuck, but it also means things are free to move in a new direction.

Try it

Bunning suggests an exercise. Imagine a situation, imagine a reversed card, and write one line about how that card's energy is low, or needs to be. For example: you've finally been offered a promotion, but your family doesn't want to move, and you draw the Chariot reversed. The Chariot upright is drive and determination, pushing forward. Reversed, it might be asking you to ease off the push, at least until everyone is on board.

What to take from this

• Reversals are optional. Decide whether to use them, and stay with your choice for a while.
• A reversal can be blocked, inward, waning or emphasised. It's rarely simply the opposite.
• Let the question, the position and the neighbours decide which of those it is.

Next, putting it all together: finding the thread through a whole spread, and saying it out loud.