all reversal readings

myrrhmyrrh

How do you understand them?

I was doing my daily three card spread today and, with even a fourth as a jumper, they were all reversed.

Mary Greer suggests that this may be the cards way of predicting delays and difficulties or again perhaps that a reading will do no good at this time.

Any other takes on a completely reversed reading?

thank you for sharing your wisdom
 

Barleywine

I wrote a paper on reversed meanings that had this to say:

Numerous reversals in a spread may show an undercurrent working at cross-purposes to the main thrust of the reading, “for good or ill.” This can also reflect a very complicated or difficult situation.
 

myrrhmyrrh

Thank you Barleywine. I wonder what is so weird in my life right now that would cause that. It was just a banal daily read.
I guess it'll all come out in the wash.
 

samsonsage

Bothered by all the reversed cards!

It's been irksome also for me to experience the same thing over a surprisingly extended period of time.

Despite my determined effort to spread the deck thoroughly over the table, mixing and turning the cards many times, I was almost laughing when my recent Celtic Cross Reading was predominantly reversed! (7 of the 10 cards)

I've accepted the 'returns' from the spread, however.

And, here are just some thoughts:

I have basically interpreted reversed cards as 'foggy', as in a dense fog obscuring clarity and vision. They're in a shadowy state, perhaps even in an unresolved condition.
Other words come to mind, "ambiguous" "equivocating" "potential and shifting".
Borrowing from the I Ching, it's as if they're 'Weak' or they are ill-defined in their character.


The traditional approach has been to understand Reversed as much the same way a 'Negative Aspect' is in Astrology, i.e. for a planet or sign to be in an adverse position or angle to the others.
I am not so satisfied with this approach, however.

I am persuaded that the cards behave in a qualitatively different way than planets of signs act in Astrology. For me, the cards serve more as Dream-images, archetypes, combinations of astrological and non-astrological phenomena. For me, they are doors to my subconscious which draws upon an almost infinite array of images and ideas. As a result, reversed cards 'feel' like when a dream is vague and poorly defined, when there are only emerging characters, and also disappearing features that I can't easily hold onto. When the cards are upright, it 'feels' like a lucid dream and I can easily remember it!

Finally, if you read my first sentence again, perhaps we have our answer right at the outset. Perhaps, that's the answer right there!
Reversed cards all just an 'irksome' aspect to the reading requiring greater effort in working on the answer which lies not in the cards but in your mind and spirit.

This is always the challenge the cards call us to.
Greater effort.
 

magicjack

I'm sure no one will agree with me on this but on my long journey of tarot reading somewhere I picked up that when ALL cards in a spread are reversed is a sign to turn them all back to upright.
 

myrrhmyrrh

Samsonsage Thank you for all of that, the notion of "murkiness" does converge after a fashion with Barleywine's "cross currents" - both of those metaphors are helpful.

MagicJack, I think I've heard that floating around too somewhere, and I'm tempted, certainly, but I would just somehow feel dishonest doing that, like I'm making the cards say something else than they were trying to say. I mean, four reversals out of what was meant to be a three card spread is pretty insistent on its reversitude (if I may).

If I didn't read reversals at all that would be one thing but I do so I feel like I need to go with it.
 

Hemera

I'm sure no one will agree with me on this but on my long journey of tarot reading somewhere I picked up that when ALL cards in a spread are reversed is a sign to turn them all back to upright.
I agree with you. I think I read this someplace (Mary K. Greer perhaps?) and I thought it made sense. I no longer read reversals, in fact, but when I did and this happened I would turn all upright. I felt the overall message was that this question (or questions) was not relevant at that moment. That the universe wanted me to focus on something else in my next reading.
But as a reading I thought it was valid done upright and it worked very well that way.
 

Barleywine

Thank you Barleywine. I wonder what is so weird in my life right now that would cause that. It was just a banal daily read.
I guess it'll all come out in the wash.

I'm not sure it has to be read as anything "earth-shaking;" perhaps just subtly different from what might have been expected with upright cards. I often see reversal as a need to "think outside the box."
 

Trogon

For me, it depends a bit on what spread/how many cards I'm using. If I'm doing a 3 or 5-card reading and all of them come up reversed, I just read the cards, but with a little more emphasis on how opposite the meaning might be from the upright meaning. So, all reversed would mean they were more opposite I guess. With only a few cards, it isn't such a statistical anomaly for them all to be reversed that I would worry about it.

On the other hand, if I'm doing a Celtic Cross spread and all 10 cards were reversed, I would take much greater notice of that. In fact, as far as I can recall, it's only happened once for me. In that case, it struck me that it was not a good time for a reading. As something came up a short time later which would have stopped the reading, it turned out that was the case.

Now, having said that, the CC reading had lead me to believe that any time I got all reversed cards, I should end the reading. But at the time I was just starting to do readings with fewer cards. I have since learned that most of the time, I can just go ahead with it. In fact, I think I had posted many years ago about ending a reading with all reversed cards. Live and learn ...
 

Barleywine

For me, it depends a bit on what spread/how many cards I'm using. If I'm doing a 3 or 5-card reading and all of them come up reversed, I just read the cards, but with a little more emphasis on how opposite the meaning might be from the upright meaning. So, all reversed would mean they were more opposite I guess. With only a few cards, it isn't such a statistical anomaly for them all to be reversed that I would worry about it.

On the other hand, if I'm doing a Celtic Cross spread and all 10 cards were reversed, I would take much greater notice of that. In fact, as far as I can recall, it's only happened once for me. In that case, it struck me that it was not a good time for a reading. As something came up a short time later which would have stopped the reading, it turned out that was the case.

Now, having said that, the CC reading had lead me to believe that any time I got all reversed cards, I should end the reading. But at the time I was just starting to do readings with fewer cards. I have since learned that most of the time, I can just go ahead with it. In fact, I think I had posted many years ago about ending a reading with all reversed cards. Live and learn ...

There are some good insights here. An all-reversed CC has only happened to me when using a new deck that I didn't sufficiently randomize before starting. In that case I scrapped the readings and started over. Now that I'm more thorough about randomizing, I read the cards as they lay. I did in fact have a public 9-card reading that came out with 7 of the 9 cards reversed, and I told the woman she should rethink her approach to the entrepreneurial initiative she was considering, since there were most likely some key elements that were "flying under the radar" and might work out differently than she anticipated.