Flipping the Script: Tarot Reversals

Since the focus of this site is on Tarot as a daily practice to enhance life and deepen our understanding of the cards, we don’t include reversals in our interpretations. If you are drawing a card of the day as a focus for consideration, every aspect of the card is relevant: what it means when its energy is showing up strong, sorely lacking, or turned on its head. We strongly recommend learning each card in all its complexity as a subject of contemplation before even beginning to think about how its orientation might put a spin on its meaning.

That said, when we do private readings or personal spreads we often allow reversals into the mix to put a finer point on the card’s message.

So if you have come to this site as a not-so-neophyte, or if you’re the type to disregard advice to take things one-step-at-a-time; here are some possible ways to interpret reversals.

Turned on its Head

If you feel you have a good grasp on a card’s message, the reversal can be that clear message ‘turned on its head’. For instance, the Eight of Disks is about the satisfaction of apprenticeship and skill-building. We find even the tedious aspects of our work take on a meditative quality. These are the phases of life we look back on as magical times when we were transformed by learning our trade. How would that be turned on its head? Your work is actually soul-crushingly boring and without creative satisfaction but you insist to yourself that it is otherwise. Or you know this work is not your calling, yet feel like you cannot stop hammering out disk after disk, cannot transition from apprentice to master.. Why? Maybe you feel…

Trapped in the Card

The cards of the Tarot represent situations or energies that we all inhabit at one time or another, none of them are supposed to last forever. But we can get snagged- either trying to make something good last forever or refusing to see the way out of something negative. Sometimes it’s simply that we’ve become comfortable in whatever mode the card represents and even the excitement of change has come to seem like a terrible disruption. The classic example of this is the High Priestess. She represents a time of introspection, meditation and gestation. It’s peaceful in her haven but life cannot be fully lived there. (Know anybody who feels like Covid-19 is leaving too soon?) Cards seen as ‘negative’ can create this problem, too. The Six of Swords is a painful card, but it’s pain is about facing a truth that can set us free. In reversal it can mean a pathological hesitancy on the threshold of painful departure.

Exactly What’s Missing

A reversal can often mean that the card represents what is not happening or what the seeker is pushing away with both hands. The Two of Wands offers a powerful connection to telos. We feel something almost like a spark of lightening reaching back from our future to call us foreword. In reversal this could mean that this spark is missing, but could also mean that the spark is being resisted or disregarded.

Reversals are tricky, and are best saved for collaborative spreads and private readings, and for experienced readers.