Reversed Cards

When you shuffle the tarot cards, they often end up facing in different directions. In the beginning, I've suggested that you ignore this effect and simply turn the upside-down cards around. Now you are ready to learn more about reversed cards and what they have to offer. because at some time you may want to include them in a reading as they add another dimension to your interpretation.

All life is energy - currents of force that mix and blend to form the patterns of our lives. Each tarot card symbolizes a particular energy, and a tarot reading shows the collective energies that make up a situation. When you do a reading, your actions and intentions align the energies of the moment with the cards to form a picture. The cards capture the energy currents in and around you as you shuffle and cut.

At any given moment, these energies will be at different levels. Some will be strong and powerful, others less so. Some will be just entering your life, others, moving away. How you use these energies depends on all the factors that bear on your situation.

When a card is upright, its energy is free to manifest. Its qualities are available and active. When a card is reversed, its energy is not fully developed. It may be in its early stages, or losing power. It may be incomplete or unavailable. The qualities of the card are present, at least in potential, but they can't express completely.

The Sun's energy is just what you would imagine - expansive and enlightening. An upright Sun shows the energy of vitality is openly available. You feel confident and successful. Now is your chance to shine. A reversed Sun shows this same energy is present, but at a lower level. The vitality is reduced or limited in some way. You may feel lowered pep or enthusiasm. You may have a desire for greatness that is frustrated. You want success, but something is holding you back.

The Empress reversed once appeared in a reading for a man who wanted to know if he and his wife might have a child. I guessed they had been trying to have a baby for some time. This card showed that the energy of mothering and birth was present, but held down in some way. This pregnancy was blocked. I told this man that once the block was removed, the chances for a child were good. Something must have happened to free up that energy because now they have a beautiful baby girl!

It is tempting to view a reversed card as undesirable. This man wanted a baby, so he was disheartened by the reversed Empress. Someone else might have viewed the same card differently. Reversed cards are not negative in and of themselves. Everything depends on what you hope to achieve.

The Three of Swords represents the energy of heartbreak and betrayal. If this card is upright, hurtful feelings are a feature of the situation. Reversed, they are also present, but reduced. Perhaps the intensity of a painful episode is fading, or you are feeling lonely, but just a little. A reversed Three of Swords is more agreeable than an upright one, but it is still a cautionary sign. The fact that an unpleasant card appears at all means that its energy is present in some way.

Sometimes a card is reversed even though you are experiencing a high level of its energy. In this case, the reversal hints that you can improve your situation by making a conscious effort to lower the energy.

You have drawn the Seven of Wands reversed in a reading about being pressured to do something you don't want to do. This card represents defiance. Since you are being pushed against your will, you are probably feeling defiant in this situation. The Seven of Wands reversed suggests that you try to subdue your strong emotions. Lessen your feelings of defiance and find a different way to deal with the problem. (Of course, it's possible that the energy is low because your defiance is being squelched! Only you can tell which interpretation is best.)

The meaning of a reversed card sometimes comes from a twist in the usual interpretation. In this sense, the Emperor reversed could show a powerful authority figure toppled from his throne. The Ten of Wands reversed might remind you to get out from under burdensome responsibilities. It's surprising how often such meanings apply, but you can't force them. They tend to occur as needed.

You can form pairs that contain reversed cards. Here is an example:

The Sun and Moon are opposites in the area of clarity - the Sun is enlightenment, the Moon, confusion. In a reading, a reversed Sun/upright Moon could show that certainty is low (Sun), and uncertainty is high (Moon), or you are bewildered now (Moon), but greater clarity is possible (Sun).

It's helpful to look at the proportion of reversed and upright cards in a reading. When many cards are upright, all your energies are expressing freely and powerfully. The overall situation is well developed, and your purpose is clear. When many cards are reversed, your energies are low, and the situation is not clearly defined. You may lack direction or feel blocked, discouraged and restricted. You could be in a topsy-turvy state where change is likely. Since energies are not well developed, they are free to go in new directions.

I encourage you to try using reversed cards. When you feel ready, state out loud your intention to use them. You might say, "I have decided to interpret reversed cards in my tarot readings." In this way, you acknowledge your decision with conviction. After a time, if you decide you like using reversed cards, add them to your practice permanently. If not, just let them go. It's better to decide one way or the other, as switching back and forth can be confusing.

Life is a constant energy flow - a marvelous dance guided by Spirit. When we understand that flow and move with it creatively, all things are possible. We can direct energy consciously or just let it take us where it will. In either case, reversed cards add an extra dimension to a reading that will help you appreciate the play of energy in your own life.

Reading for yourself is not only something you can do, but something that is an integral part of using tarot for our own spiritual and personal development.  When you can lay a spread for yourself, and recognize how all the cards relate to you - positive and negative - then you really know yourself, and knowing yourself is a big step toward loving yourself, making the best use of your strengths, and being able to improve other areas of your life.

Yet, many tarot readers have difficulty reading for themselves.  In this article we will look at some of the reasons why this may happen, and also at some solutions to these problems. There are several reasons why readers may have trouble reading for themselves, and the solutions to these differ.  Knowing why it is happening will help you figure out what to do about it.

First of all, the spread may be too large. The larger and more complex it is, the harder it can be to make sense out of things, particularly when you are first learning and when you are emotionally close to the subject.  There's a kind of information overload that can make the other problems listed below even worse.  Practice reading for yourself by starting small - pull one card for a week, and then when the week is over, spend some time thinking about how that card came into play in your life.  Don't worry that you don't have any idea what the card means when you pull it - you'll know by the end of the week!  If you do this continually and faithfully, eventually you will come to know which cards show up for you most often and what they are connected with in your own life.

If you see a neat spread that you really want to try, but it is bigger than those you are used to using, try simplifying it - for example, the hourglass spread could be simplified to a 3-card or 5-card spread.  This may be more manageable at first then jumping in and trying to do a large reading for yourself.  Similarly, when reading for yourself, use a deck you really know, that feels comfortable and familiar.  Save experimenting with new decks for easier situations.

A different problem is not giving ourselves the gift of a thorough and complete reading.  Many experienced readers have a tendency to skim their own readings, click off the cards in succession - "yep, I know what that means!!", then sweeping the cards up and put them away.  It may seem hard to justify the time in our busy lives, but by doing this, we miss the subtle messages in the cards that are meant just for us - the special symbol that may stand out, the patterns that we would see if we spent as much time on our own readings as we do for our clients.  Some readers overcome this problem by pretending the reading is for a client, and then recording or writing it as if it were a paid reading.  After all, we deserve the benefit of our own insight, don't we?

It is hard to be objective when reading for ourself. This causes several problems, one of which is something like going into shock.  When you lay out a spread for yourself and see a lot of reversed cards, or difficult/scary cards, there's a kind of self-protective distancing that sets in and it becomes hard to make yourself work through it - you have to fight off the desire to shuffle all those cards right back into the deck and start over!  This in spite of the "tough love" and words of wisdom that we are more than capable of giving to others in the same situation.  This protective mechanism may be extreme enough that we convince ourselves that the cards make no sense or the reading is somehow confused or wrong.

If the truth be told, everyone has things that they hide from themselves, some more so than others.  One of the "problems" with reading for ourselves is that these things have a pesky way of surfacing :-).  If you are having trouble reading for yourself, it could be because there is something your subconscious is trying to tell you that your conscious mind really doesn't want to know.  Like, you're really not happy in your marriage, or you feel like the last 6 years of graduate school were a total waste of time and you really want to quit without getting your degree.  These are very scary and difficult things to face in any context, and if you are a tarot reader, they will come out in your personal readings.  This can be very tough to deal with, and causes some people to avoid ever reading for themselves.

A very common problem among beginning readers is a lack of self-confidence or trust in their reading abilities.  Just because you are not objective when reading for yourself does *not* mean that you will lay the wrong cards, or that the cards will be somehow biased or skewed.  Trust me, the cards themselves will be fine.  It's our interpretation of them that can be skewed or biased.  So as you're doing the reading, trust that the Universe, or your guides, or your subconscious, will choose the right cards even if your conscious mind has no idea what they mean.  Then give yourself some time and space to interpret them.  This will keep you from worrying that the reading itself has something wrong with it - knowing that the cards are right is a liberating feeling and cuts through a lot of the possible confusion.

One last problem that contributes is pessimism and negativity.  I don't know how many times I've seen good readers suddenly turn doom and gloom when it comes to their own cards.  We all know that cards are neither inherently bad nor good, but all have aspects of both - yet when reading for ourselves, some readers take a very negative slant - cards are given the worst possible interpretation, and we don't see the positive messages these same cards can hold for us.  This is a self-perpetuating problem, because someone who perceives that they always get bad cards will eventually become reluctant to do a reading at all, and frightened and worried by the readings they do attempt.  We try our best to be honest yet positive for our clients, and it is important to give ourselves the same pep talks, and avoid unnecessary negativity.  We counsel our clients to take their future in their own hands, yet sometimes become fatalistic or overly deterministic about our own readings.  This is not saying we should sugar-coat our readings, just that being overly negative is also a form of untruth and equally harmful and unfair to ourselves.

The first thing to do if you are having trouble doing a reading for yourself, is to think about the various problems that may be listed above, along with the more typical problems like not really having or making a quiet place or time to do your readings.  See if you recognize any of these as possible contributors to the problem, and then you will at least know where to start.

Here are some ideas to help overcome these difficulties:

- Start with small personal readings - 1 to 3 cards that cover a short period of time.  This is both easier to process and less scary, because it's OK to have a bad week, but a bad year is a lot harder to handle.

- If you do have a large spread to interpret, or if the issue is unusually emotional, try some of the exercises listed in the article "Analyzing Large Readings".  These will help get you started on interpreting the reading objectively, by giving you a standard set of questions to ask about the reading, and will help break the reading down into manageable pieces.

- Trust that the cards you choose will be right, and don't worry if you don't figure out what they mean right away.  Struggling with difficult readings is one of the best ways to learn.  Write the reading down, and any meanings for cards that are clear.  Note which cards are confusing or unclear and commit them to memory, then give the reading time.  It may be months before you understand what those cards were telling you, but when you finally know what it is, it will be an illuminating experience and much more powerful than having someone else tell you what they think.

- Before you start, commit yourself to following through on the reading, regardless of the outcome.  Be sure you are really mentally prepared to receive an answer to the question you are asking - no matter which way it goes.  If you have a very strong stake in one particular outcome, it will be much more difficult to handle if you don't receive that outcome.

- Consider the positive and negative of every card, and realize that more than one aspect of the card may apply to your situation.  Don't assume the worst, or the best, but try to take a middle ground.  Imagine what you would say to a good friend or client if they received those cards, and realize that you are deserving of the very same interpretation.

- Pay attention to each card individually - try hard not to skip over any cards, as the ones you most want to skip over may be the ones with the important message from your subconscious.  Allow yourself to celebrate the good cards equally with worrying about the bad.  Think of reversed and difficult cards as opportunities to improve your future or change something about your life that isn't working.

- If you think you know what a negative card represents, try a followup empowerment reading that focuses on what you can do to solve that problem - this can be especially helpful if there is one card that comes up over and over - you will keep getting it until that problem is solved.  The empowering reading will give you a plan of action and a feeling of control.  Remember that you create your future and your own reality.

Spreads and Meanings

 The Tarot is normally used to provide a reading in which a particular question is explored or the questioner's life in general is considered. Each card in the Tarot pack has a basic set of meanings and associations attached to it, but interpreting cards according to these attributions alone would be an unsatisfying and one-dimensional exercise. In order to provide a framework that allows a greater richness of meaning, the reader employs spreads: layouts of cards in which the position of a card in the spread modifies the interpretation of the card.

For example, the Nine of Cups (shown here, as illustrated in the Marseilles deck) is a card of contentment and fulfilling relationships. If this card appears in a spread in a position indicating the future, then it suggests that a time of well-being and fulfillment is on the way. If it appears in a position that shows current difficulties, then it warns that complacency, taking things for granted or stagnation are problems that the questioner must avoid. Our discussion of Tarot spreads considers some specific spreads in more detail.

Reversed Meanings

As well as modifying the interpretation of a card according to its position in a spread, there are a number of further refinements that may be employed to adjust a card's meaning. One of the most common, and arguably the least useful, is that of reversed meanings. With this method, the cards are kept or shuffled so that they may appear either upright or reversed (upside down) in a spread. When a card is reversed, the meaning is modified, usually either tempered or reversed.

As a simplistic example, the Wheel of Fortune appearing in an upright position would indicate the felicitous intervention of Fate through a lucky break or good fortune. A reversed position would be more suggestive of bad luck and a downturn in fortune. Many readers do not use the system of reversed meanings at all, largely because it is a rather clumsy and inelegant mechanism, and there are better ways to refine the interpretation of a card.

Synthesis and Majorities

 All but the simplest spreads contain positions that can be considered together for a richer interpretation. Spreads like the Celtic Cross are arranged so that cards in certain locations explicate and refine the meanings of cards in related positions. For example, the Covering and Questioner positions are closely related, as are the Root and Past positions and the three positions dealing with future influences. The House and Inside positions show the external and internal influences on the matter in hand, in an analogous way to the Covering and Crossing showing aiding and opposing influences. There are many ways, some obvious and some subtle, in which the positions in a spread work with each other, and this synthesis of cards is a very powerful way of bringing a reading together as a whole.

 Majorities are a way of getting an overall sense of a reading and are another prism through which the interpretation of individual cards may be refracted. In most readings there will be a dominant suit of the Minor Arcana, and this is termed the Primary Majority. The attributions of the suit involved indicate the tenor of the reading. For example, Wands or Pentacles might suggest that the reading largely concerns objective events or objects respectively, and Swords or Cups could indicate subjective thoughts or feelings respectively.

 The Secondary Majority is the next most prevalent suit in a reading, and this can impart a subordinate, weaker influence. The compatibility or otherwise of the suits in the Primary and Secondary Majorities (as outlined in the section on dignities, below) can give further clues to the dynamics of the forces at work within a reading.

The other significant majority that readers look out for is the proportion of Major Arcana to Minor Arcana cards. An important time with long-term consequences is suggested by a relatively large number of Major cards. If the cards are mostly Minor, then a less critical time is indicated where events are unlikely to have lasting significance.

Dignities, Resonance and Dissonance

Almost all spreads have positions that explicate other positions, or positions that may be considered sequential or neighboring in some meaningful sense. Some spreads even have multiple cards in each position for a deeper interpretation. In all of these cases, cards are easily linked to others through physical or interpretational proximity, and the meanings of these linked cards can be modified according to a system of dignities.

For this to work, certain suits of the Minor Arcana are considered as being beneficial and strengthening to each other (resonance), whereas others are considered to be antagonistic and weakening to one another (dissonance), and the rest remain neutral to each other. Resonant cards are well-dignified and dissonant ones ill-dignified. Suits of a similar nature strengthen; suits of opposite nature weaken. Cups and Pentacles are neutral towards each other, and the remaining resonances and dissonances are as follows:

Combinations

When a reading produces groups of identically numbered or titled cards - for example, three of the Eights or all of the Queens - then those groups or combinations may be given further significance. For example, all four Aces appearing together in a reading would be indicative of a momentous time of great energy and new beginnings in which the questioner must take care to make the most of opportunities in a positive way.

Timing

Getting a sense of the time scales involved in a reading is notoriously difficult. Some spreads have positions dealing with the 'recent' past, 'near' future, 'distant' past, 'eventual' outcome and so on - all rather nebulous phrases. As a rough guide, the 'present' may be considered as a few weeks either side of the current date, 'near' and 'recent' refer to a small number of weeks or months, and 'eventual' and 'distant' may be months or years away. Some readers employ mechanical methods of suggesting timing, using formulae based on such things as the suits involved in a reading, but these are usually less than helpful. Spreads like the Calendar Spread are constructed around specific time scales, and these may be employed when timing is important.

 Certain cards, notably Judgement, can have an accelerating or decelerating effect on a reading. A well-dignified Eight of Wands, for example, can bring an end to delays and move things on at a pace, but if the Eight is ill-dignified it can slow matters down and herald delays and cancellations.

The greatest influences on the time scales involved, however, are the questioner's own actions. They may choose to go with the trends shown by the cards and speed things up, or they may oppose them and slow things down or avoid the predicted consequences altogether. The Tarot is actually an empowering rather than a fatalistic system - it helps to put a person in control of their own destiny, as long as it is approached in an intelligent way.