Reversed cards: what they mean and whether you need them
Sometimes a card lands upside down. Many guides then give it a second, often gloomy meaning, and that unsettles beginners more than it helps them. Here you’ll find out what lies behind reversed cards, how you can read them if you want to, and why you can manage perfectly well without them at the start.
What a reversed card is
When you shuffle physical cards, some of them inevitably turn round. If a card lies in front of you upside down after the draw, it is called “reversed” or “inverted”. Guides from as early as the 18th century gave an upright and a reversed meaning for every card, and Arthur Edward Waite, too, noted down a reversed interpretation for every card in his companion book to the Waite-Smith tarot. So the idea has a tradition.
What it doesn’t have is a generally accepted method. Some read the reversed card simply as the opposite, others as a weakening, still others as a hint at something hidden. That’s why many experienced readers do without reversals altogether: the rules contradict one another, and the deck has enough nuance when upright.
Three ways of reading that work
If you want to use reversed cards, it helps not to think of “the opposite” but of a force that flows differently than intended. Three variations have proved their worth. You don’t have to commit to one of them; often the question tells you which one fits.
Blocked
The quality of the card is present but isn’t getting through. Something is holding it back: fear, circumstances, another person, you yourself. The Three of Wands upright shows someone gazing out to sea, waiting for their ships to come in. Read reversed: you’ve set something in motion, but nothing is coming back, or you can’t bear the waiting and are already starting on the next thing.
Excessive
The quality isn’t too weak but too strong. It tips over into too much. The King of Pentacles upright stands for reliability, prosperity and being grounded; in excess, this turns into stinginess, stubbornness, a life lived only for the bank balance. Temperance reversed can mean an excess of balance: everything is diluted and negotiated for so long that nothing has any shape left.
Turned inwards
The card is at work, but on the inside rather than the outside. It then describes not what is happening, but what is happening within you, often still unnoticed. The Hermit reversed can mean a withdrawal you are hiding from yourself: sociable on the outside, long since turned away on the inside. The Sun reversed: the joy is there, but you don’t show it, perhaps because you believe you haven’t earned it.
Do you have to use reversed cards?
No. That isn’t carelessness but a decision that many experienced readers make quite deliberately. Three reasons speak for working without them at the start:
- You are learning 78 images. With reversals it feels like 156, and the second half is harder, because it doesn’t speak from the image but from a rule.
- Every upright card already contains its shadow side. The Ten of Cups shows family happiness, and anyone who looks closely will wonder whether the idyll might not also mean pressure. The nuances are in the image; you don’t need to turn the card round to find them.
- The position in the spread does a large part of the work. A card on “Obstacle” reads differently from one on “Advice” anyway. In most cases, that takes the place of the reversal.
If, after a few months, you notice that a layer is missing from your readings, you can add reversals. Then you are building on a solid foundation instead of doubting twice over right from the start.
How to set it up on tarotlicht.de
When you draw cards, all cards appear upright to begin with. Reversed cards are an option you can switch on before drawing if you’d like to work with them. Then, for each card, it is also randomly decided whether it appears upright or reversed, at the very moment you stop the reel or tap a card in the circle. Nothing is turned afterwards, and nothing is saved. If you leave the option off, you’re not missing anything; if you switch it on, you should know which of the three ways of reading you want to apply.
Three examples from practice
The Chariot reversed in the “Present” position. Upright: you have the reins in your hands and are making progress. Reversed, read as “blocked”: you’re putting your foot down, but the sphinxes in front of the chariot are pulling in different directions; perhaps you want two things at once. Read as “excessive”: you’re controlling everything so grimly that nobody wants to ride along with you any more.
The Eight of Pentacles reversed in the “Advice” position. Upright, it stands for patient practice, craftsmanship and care. Reversed, as advice: stop polishing and polishing. Either the work is finished and you don’t dare to hand it over, or you’re working carefully on something that no longer interests you.
The Star reversed in the “What I’m missing” position. Upright: hope, confidence, an open sky after the storm. Reversed and turned inwards: the confidence is there, but you don’t trust it and keep it small. The reading then doesn’t say “There is no hope” but “You aren’t letting it in”.
As you can see, in all three cases the reversed card is not a condemnation but a question. Where is it stuck, where is it too much, where is it playing out in secret? If you ask like that, you can work well with reversed cards. If you only see them as warning signals, you’re better off leaving them out and looking more closely at the upright images instead. In the card dictionary you’ll find the basic meaning of every card, the starting point for every reversal.