Card Reversals

Hi there. I just returned to reading the tarot after a 20 year absence. I bought the Thoth deck because I used to read with the Rider Waite deck and I wanted somethng a little more challenging.
I am reading the Mirror of the Soul and also The Tarot Handbook. I find these books to be helpful as they deal specifically with the Thoth deck(because I can't remember all the meanings of the cards anymore).The problem I have though, is that there is no mention of card meanings when they are reversed(and they are not automatically the opposite of the card meaning right side up). So I am guessing alot,and assuming things I'm not sure of. Other books on the tarot(that don't specifically deal with the Thoth deck)give meanings for card reversals that don't seem right for some reason.
Can anyone reccomend a good book I can read on card reversals that deal specifically with that deck? Any other suggestions?

Hello Celeste, welcome to Aeclectic. I`ve just got the Thoth deck myself so I`m not at all knowledgable about it but as I understand it Crowley never intended to use reversals with this deck. The LWB mentions meanings when the cards are dignified or ill dignified depending on what cards surround them.
www.supertarot.co.uk is a good site which shows how to use cards this way.
Love and light

Crsytalmynx xx

Thanks for the information Crystalminx. I took a brief look at the link you provided and will look at it more in depth when I have more time. One thing I noticed about the website was that the author stated that when he read without knowing the "exact meanings" of the cards he got a more accurate reading. I have noticed that too. When I strain to 'remember'a meaning I am far less accurate than if I just follow my gut. I've also noticed that some people are easier to read for than others for some reason. With those people its like I'm just caught up in a vortex of information that sometimes takes my breath away.
Anyway, thanks for your welcome as well as the information.

crystalmynx said:

... but as I understand it Crowley never intended to use reversals with this deck. The LWB mentions meanings when the cards are dignified or ill dignified depending on what cards surround them.
www.supertarot.co.uk is a good site which shows how to use cards this way.

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True. Crowley was of the view that dignified vs. ill dignified cards (determined using elemental dignities) should be used instead of upright vs. reversed cards. However, practically speaking and as a matter of developing your own approach, there's no reason why you couldn't use reversals: assign the dignified meanings to the upright cards, and ill dignified meanings to the reversed cards. A simple approach is to come up with divinatory meanings for the upright/dignified cards of the deck and then to assign ill dignified divinatory meanings (or reversals divinatory meanings) based on the "shadow" aspects of the pright/dignified DM. Thus, if your upright/dignified DM for the 4 of Disks is consolidating, investing, saving", the reversal/ill dignified DM for the card could be "greed, overpossessiveness, overacquisitiveness".

I have a very good book called "Keywords for the Crowley Tarot" by Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler and although there are no reversed meanings, the author suggests what the card encourages and what the card warns against and I find those two ideas very useful when I am looking at a spread. For instance, I just opened the book to The Chariot. The book says the card "Encourages tackling the matter immediately, decisively, and purposefully", however Warns Against: Believing that everything has been achieved by just setting out toward the goal." So, depending on the surrounding cards, one could glean an encouragement or a warning and that is how I have come to use the light and dark energy of an upright card in a spread. There is another book by Banzhaf and Akron called "The Crowley Tarot The Handbook to the Cards" and at the top of every card description they have these cryptic comments under the headings of Instinct Goal Guiding Principle Light Shadow and Quality. Using The Chariot as the example once again, under Shadow it says: "High-handedness, meglomania, ultimate failure because of obstacles." Sure sounds like reversed meanings to me. So it's just up to you to 'know' which energy the card is displaying in a spread. I highly recommend both books, especially the Keywords book because it's an easy primer to use, especially after you've done a reading to add that little something that you hadn't thought about it. It also breaks down all of the symbols in every card.

Lawguy51

Thanks for both your comments. I was planning to get the Crowley Tarot Handbook anyway. I will look for the other book as well-it sounds helpful.
What I've been mostly doing up to this point is relying(heavily)on my intuition if I'm not sure what a card means. Mostly this works,but later when I look up the meaning of the card after the reading(especially when I'm doing it for other people)then I start to second guess myself,especially when the card is reversed.

Elemental Dignities?

Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Rusty Neon said:

(determined using elemental dignities)

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You know, I'm not so sure about elemental dignities. I can't recall him ever mentioning them in the Book of Thoth.

On top of that, let's say you pull out 7 of Swords (the Lord of Futility). I can't imagine that putting the 9 of Swords (the Lord of Cruelty) on top of that would improve things any, even if they are both Airy.

Sometimes a situation is made worse by adding more of the same - the solution to drinking too much isn't taking another shot.

And this kind of reading seems to be implied in Crowley's treatment of the numerology behind the small cards, where issues of balance and purity are very important.

I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on this, as it's been itching at me for a while.

Love is the Law, Love under Will.

Yeah, the elemental dignitaries seems more of a Case thing than a Crowley thing. Of course, they were both describing the same divination method (more or less), so I suppose it's possible that Crowley used the elemental associations. Of course, it's just as possible that he didn't.
Case says something good about them, though...that they strengthen the message for good or ill...thus the Seven of Swords next to the Nine of Swords would be VERY bad indeed.
I've given up on both elemental dignitaries and reversals at this point. I do keep track of what suit is most prevalent, but I generally just read the cards be the keywords, without tweaking them. That said, I did a reading for a friend a while ago (for boyfriend problems) that showed one possible outcome with the Lovers next to the Tower, and the other with the Hermit next to the Sun. Given what the reading was about, I don't think the Lovers was terribly positive...

"On top of that, let's say you pull out 7 of Swords (the Lord of Futility). I can't imagine that putting the 9 of Swords (the Lord of Cruelty) on top of that would improve things any, even if they are both Airy."

Minos, I think you may have missed an important point that that site outlines on using the elemental dignities. The website above states only that water and fire weaknen one another, as do air and earth. All other combinations STRENGTHEN the effect of the cards. So drawing the 7 of Swords and crossing it with the 9 of Swords would strengthen the effect of Cruelty, since air strengthens air. You seem to be mistaking the strengthening effect as automatically implying an improvement. In fact, elemental dignities that strengthen a card can be positive (if the card is positive) or negative (if the card is negative... not that anything is purely positive or negative, mind you).

Elemental dignities that weaken a card can take away the card's positive effects (for example the 2 of Cups crossed by the Ace of Wands... this would imply emotion and will conflicting in what amounts to a fizzle). They can also weaken a negative effect (I'm imagining the Ace of Pentacles against the 10 of Swords... that would imply catastrophically bad thinking being saved from causing ruin only by tremendously unexpected good fortune).

I find it ironic that the art style of Lady Harris in the minors can be reversed without too much difficulty as the Majors are specific pictures. It seems to be teh back of the cards that do not hold well to being reversed, as it is the back of the cards that identify the overall energy present in the specific deck.

one method of forming dignified/illdignfied cards:

shuffle the deck face down, allow reversals, when the spread is laid out any cards that are reversed are ill-dignified regardless of what the keyword or element is. realign the cards if it is wished. From there the forming of interpretations of what is dignified and ill-dignified can be done with the Case/Crowley form in connection with the backside reversals.

While i am not sure what specific spreads this method can be used, but i have recieved the hanged man card reversed a few times recently and has inspired me to use this method in all of my decks, even if i do not read the front of the cards reversed.