Significance of the Reversed

Sydkid182 said:

Hello everyone! When I began tarot I would always regard a Reversed card as something quite negative.

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I don't choose to reverse cards at all: I find that I can tell how to read a card without it. So when a card DOES come up reversed without my reversing any of it, I take it that teh vcard is screaming for attention. It's just an attention-seeker, or it is the most important card on the table on that one occasion, and I read it as centrel to the issue.

Another way to read them is this.

Just say that a card like (for instance) the Five Cups, means someone or something making you feel overwhelming regret if it is upright. Then, if it is reversed, it might indicate you making SOMEONE ELSE feel overwehelming regret. It changes nothing about the meaning of the card, just where the regret is Nd where it originates from in the situation.

Ditto with other cards. For instance, we get threads regularly saying "I know the Six Pentacles is about generosity, but does it mean I should be generous to other, or I shoiuld accept generosity from others?" Reading it upright one way and reversed the other, might clarify that and prevent people having to ask.

I do not read cards upside down. It's a very strange thing for me but when I read the reversed meanings out of a book I find out that often times I use those meanings in the upright position. I use the rest of the spread to tell me how to interpret the meaning. I find it easier to get the meaning that way then to look at it upside down. I have a few times started out in a reading with reversed cards but when I looked at it closely I would have come up with the same outcome as if all the cards were upright. I still try to work with reversals but then I feel like I'm messing with the order of the cards by turning half upside down. I definitely use them when I have put the cards in upside down by mistake or when someone shuffles the cards upside down.

The deck I use (Afro-Brazilian Tarot, Lo Scarabeo) has no instructions for reversed cards. So I decided to read those cards as signifying an area of improvement for the querent.


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I came back to this thread because I wanted to put my meanderings into a more formal structure (see attached). I should note that I haven't read Mary Greer's book on reversals yet (it's on my list) so any similarities are purely coincidental. These are mostly my own thoughts built up over years of practice, but I'm sure some of them came from sources that I subconsciously soaked up.

ETA: I'm removing the attachment from this post since I created a new thread for discussion of reversed card meanings in general, which captures everything. I got tired of updating in two places.

I find it easier to read with reversals than without but each to their own. It may be sensible to start with uprights and once you're familiar start using reversals else study can be overwhelming initially.

Reversals contain both extreme meanings of the upright interpretation so for example 4P might be holding on to money whereas the reversal is off balance so could be an extreme miser OR reckless spending.

Reversals also show how the reading is waxing and waning, what energies and influences are building or moving out and so reversals indicate the flow of things.