Asking and looking · Lesson 5 of 5

Reversed cards: choose your approach

Learn the main ways readers interpret an upside-down card, choose one before you shuffle, and apply it consistently, or read every card upright with confidence.

5 min read

A reversal is a decision

When a card comes up upside down, nothing on it has changed. The figure, the stars and the colours are exactly as they were. What changes is a decision you make about what “upside down” means, and readers have made that decision differently for more than two centuries.

Etteilla’s fortune-telling system gave cards reversed meanings in the 1780s; S. L. MacGregor Mathers listed them in his booklet The Tarot in 1888, and Waite printed them again in 1910. Many Marseille readers never read reversals at all, and most Thoth readers set them aside in favour of elemental dignities. Mary K. Greer’s The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (2002) gathers many approaches side by side. So there is no single correct meaning of a reversed card. There is the approach you chose, applied the same way every time.

Upright only is a real choice

Reading every card upright is not a beginner’s shortcut. Experienced readers work this way, and the nuance a reversal would add comes instead from the position, the neighbouring cards and the question. A Four of Pentacles in the challenge position already points to a grip that has become too tight, without being turned.

If you are new, or if reversals make every spread feel like a list of problems, start here. In Olivia, some cards in a spread fall turned. If you read upright only, simply read them upright: you lose nothing essential.

Four ways to read upside down

If you do read reversals, these four approaches keep the card’s quality intact and change only how it moves. Blocked: the quality is present but obstructed, wanted and not quite reached. Turned inward: it works privately rather than openly, in thought rather than in the room. Too much or too little: the quality is overdone or missing, and the position usually tells you which. Not fully expressed: it is still forming, or already fading; this is Olivia’s version of the older “delay”, and it never becomes a date.

Each approach has a habit to watch. Blocked can make every reversal sound like an obstacle. Too much or too little asks you to decide which one, not to keep both. Not fully expressed slides easily into timing, so keep it about readiness, never the calendar. Older books also offer “reversed means the opposite”; it is best left aside, because it splits every card into a good half and a bad half and throws away most of the image.

Any of the four pairs well with an image read: turn the card and describe what you literally see. The Hanged Man reversed stands the figure the right way up, the cord still tied to the ankle. The question it raises is plain: did the pause end before its new view arrived, or was it refused?

Choose before you shuffle

Choose one approach, or a pair such as blocked plus image read, before you shuffle. Write it at the top of the journal page and keep it for a month. If you pick the approach after the card appears, you will pick the one that says what you hoped; switching after the draw is how readers argue themselves into the reading they wanted.

With a paper deck, turn half the cards round while you shuffle so that orientation is random, and set every card upright again between readings. In Olivia, decide before you draw whether a turned card will count as reversed. Each card page carries a reversed section and reversed keywords, written as blocked, excessive, inward or still-forming versions of the card, never as bad news. After a month, look back: did your approach make the readings sharper or vaguer? Then keep it, or change it on purpose.

A worked example

The Four of Pentacles reversed, four ways

Four of Pentacles

Suppose you ask, “What is my caution about this new role asking me to see?” and the Four of Pentacles lands reversed in the challenge position. First describe it upright: in Olivia’s image a crowned ivory figure sits on a rough block, arms closed in a ring around a gold-starred disc pressed to the chest, with a walled city far behind. The quality is holding on.

Now read it through each approach. Blocked: you want to feel secure and cannot; the holding brings no calm. Turned inward: the grip is private, a refusal to spend or to say that nobody else sees. Too much or too little: rigid guarding, or no boundary at all; in a challenge position, too much is the likelier reading. Not fully expressed: a need for security you have not admitted, or a grip already starting to loosen.

An image read adds one more lens: turn the card and the three lapis stars now form a triangle pointing down, with the walled city hanging at the top edge. Only one of these readings belongs in your journal: the one you chose before you shuffled.

Try this

Before your next spread, write one line in your notebook: “Reversals: upright only”, or name a single approach, such as blocked.
Open the Four of Pentacles card page and read its upright and reversed sections side by side; label which of the four approaches each reversed sentence uses.
Open The Hanged Man card page on your phone, lock rotation, turn the phone upside down, and describe only what you see before reading.
Draw a three-card spread in Olivia and read each turned card through your chosen approach alone, or upright if you chose upright only.
After a month, reread those journal pages and note whether the approach made your readings clearer or vaguer.

To remember

A reversal means what your chosen approach says, and you choose before shuffling.
Reading every card upright is a complete, respected way to read.
A reversed card keeps its quality; only the way that quality moves changes.