Reversed tarot cards, and why some readers ignore them
An upside-down card looks like a message. Before it can be one, it has to survive a simple question: how did it get that way? Once you know the mechanics of shuffling, the three main approaches to reversals become a choice you make rather than a rule you follow.
A card lands upside down because of how you shuffle, not because the deck chose it
Start with the physical facts, because they shape everything else. A card can only appear reversed if something in your handling rotated it 180 degrees. A standard riffle shuffle, where you split the deck and interleave the two halves, never flips a card. Neither does a clean overhand shuffle. Both change the order and leave every card pointing the same way.
Reversals appear when you do something else. You might turn one half of the deck around before merging it. You might spread the cards face down on a table and swirl them, which is sometimes called washing. Some readers deliberately flip a chunk of the deck now and then. Each of these methods produces a different rate of reversed cards.
This matters more than it sounds. If you wash the deck thoroughly, each card has roughly an even chance of facing either way. In a ten-card spread, the chance that not a single card comes up reversed is about one in a thousand. So a spread with no reversals is not a special sign of clear sailing. It is a near-certainty that your shuffle produced some, or a near-certainty that it produced none, depending on your method.
None of this means reversals are worthless. It means the orientation of a card carries information about your hands, not about the future. Whatever value you get from it comes from what you do with it afterward.
Position one: the meaning is blocked, delayed, or turned on its head
This is the approach most beginners meet first. The upright card has a meaning, and the reversed card weakens it, blocks it, or reverses it. Upright Three of Cups is celebration with friends. Reversed, it becomes a falling-out, or a party you were not invited to.
The approach has real history. In the 1780s the French cartomancer Etteilla published card meanings with separate upright and reversed entries, and Arthur Edward Waite did the same in his 1911 guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith. If you own a mass-market deck with a little white booklet, that booklet almost certainly follows this model.
The strength is clarity. You always know what to say, and the reading gains contrast, because seventy-eight cards become a hundred and fifty-six possible statements.
The weakness shows up at the edges. Some cards do not have a clean opposite. What is the reverse of the Wheel of Fortune, a card already about change in both directions? Applied mechanically, this method produces sentences that sound decisive but mean very little. It can also tip a reading toward gloom, because a spread half full of reversals starts to read like a list of things going wrong. Readers who use this approach well tend to treat reversal as a shading, not as a switch that flips from good to bad.
Position two: the same energy, turned inward or dialled down
The second approach keeps the card's core meaning intact and changes where the energy is pointing. A reversed card is the same theme, but private rather than public, unfinished rather than complete, or running too hot or too cold.
Under this reading, the Three of Cups reversed is not betrayal. It might be a celebration you are keeping to yourself, or a friendship that exists but has gone quiet. The Emperor upright is structure and authority in the world. Reversed, it might be authority you are still building inside yourself, or control applied so hard it has become rigid.
Many working readers prefer this because it respects the picture on the card. You are not being asked to memorise a second meaning that contradicts the first. You learn one card well and then ask which direction it faces.
The honest weakness is vagueness. Inward, delayed, blocked, excessive, not yet ready: these are elastic enough to fit almost any situation, which makes them hard to be wrong about. If a method can never be wrong, it also cannot be tested. Readers who use this approach carefully tend to commit to one specific version in the moment, out loud, rather than hedging across all five. Saying the theme is present but unexpressed is a claim. Saying it could be anything is not.
Position three: leave them out, because the deck is already full of difficulty
Plenty of experienced readers use only upright cards, and this is not laziness. Their argument is that the deck already contains its own range. The Tower, the Ten of Swords, the Five of Pentacles and the Devil are difficult without any help. Adding a second, dimmer version of every card can flatten those distinctions rather than sharpen them.
There is also a practical case. Older decks in the Tarot de Marseille tradition have pip cards, the numbered suit cards, made of repeated suit symbols with no clear top or bottom. On many of them, you genuinely cannot tell which way up the card is. Readers in that tradition often take their shading from the surrounding cards instead, and from the direction figures are facing.
The upright-only reader gets nuance from context. A Three of Cups next to the Five of Cups reads differently from a Three of Cups next to the Sun. The spread position does work too, because the same card means something different in a past slot than in an outcome slot.
If you want to build this skill, learn the upright cards deeply first. Our page on the full tarot card meanings at /tarot/ lays out each card's core sense, which is the base you need whichever approach you eventually choose. A reader who knows seventy-eight cards well will out-read one who half-knows a hundred and fifty-six.
How to pick one: run a small experiment rather than an argument
There is no authority who can settle this for you, and the sources disagree, so treat it as a working choice. Here is a way to decide that takes a few weeks.
Pick one approach and use it exclusively for twenty readings. Write each one down before you know how things turn out: the cards, your interpretation, the date, and the question. Then switch to the second approach for another twenty, and the third for twenty more. Go back and read your notes a month later.
You are not testing whether tarot predicts anything. You are testing something narrower and more answerable: which approach made you say something useful, specific and honest. Some people find reversals give them a handle on hard readings. Others find their notes full of vague hedging that could apply to any week.
A few practical points feed into the choice. If you read for other people, reversals need more explaining, and a nervous querent may hear the word reversed as bad news no matter what you say. If your deck has heavy borders or asymmetric art, orientation is easy to see, which favours using it. If you shuffle by riffling only, you will never produce reversals at all unless you change your habits, and there is no reason you must.
Consistency matters more than which one you choose. Switching approach mid-reading, to make an awkward card fit, is where readings go wrong.
What reversals cannot do, said plainly
There is no good evidence that tarot cards predict future events, and orientation does not change that. Studies of card reading have not found accuracy beyond what you would expect from chance and from statements broad enough to fit most people. If someone tells you a reversed card proves an outcome is coming, they are overstating what anyone knows.
What tarot does reliably is give you a structured prompt. Seventy-eight images, drawn in an order you did not choose, push you to consider angles you were avoiding. That is genuinely useful, and it does not require the cards to be magic. A reversal, under any of the three approaches, is one more constraint on your thinking, and constraints often make thinking sharper.
So keep the stakes proportionate. A reversed card is not a warning about your health, your court case or your money, and no reading should replace a doctor, a lawyer or a financial adviser. If a spread leaves you frightened, notice that a frightening interpretation was one of several available, and that you selected it.
The honest version of this practice sounds like: here is what this card usually means, here is why I read it as turned inward today, and here is what that might be worth thinking about. That is a real thing to offer. It is smaller than a prophecy and considerably more useful.
Reversed tarot cards are made by your hands, not by the deck, and there are three defensible things to do with them: read the meaning as blocked or turned around, read the same meaning as pointing inward, or ignore orientation and take your shading from the neighbouring cards. All three have serious readers behind them, and none is provably right. Learn the upright meanings properly first, pick one approach, use it consistently for a stretch of readings, and keep notes. The notes, not the tradition, will tell you which one makes you a clearer reader.
Questions people ask
If I never want reversals, how do I stop getting them?
Shuffle in a way that cannot rotate a card. A riffle shuffle, where you split the deck into two halves and interleave the edges, keeps every card facing the same direction. So does a plain overhand shuffle, where you slide packets from one hand to the other. Reversals only appear if you turn a half around, wash the cards face down on a table, or flip part of the deck. You can also simply turn any reversed card the right way up before you read it. That is not cheating. It is a choice about which method you are using.
Does a reading with lots of reversed cards mean bad news?
Not by itself. If you wash the deck thoroughly, each card has close to an even chance of landing either way, so a spread with five reversals out of ten is the most likely single result. It is what the mathematics predicts, not a signal. What you can reasonably do is notice patterns within one suit or one theme, and even then, treat it as a question rather than a verdict. And if you read reversals as inward or unfinished rather than as failure, a heavy spread stops looking like a disaster report.
Which approach do most professional readers use?
There is no reliable survey, so anyone giving you a firm percentage is guessing. In practice you will find working readers in all three camps, and many who switch depending on the deck or the client. Readers in the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition are more likely to use reversals, because Waite published reversed meanings himself. Readers working with older Marseille-style decks more often skip them, partly because many of those cards have no clear top or bottom. The split is real and long-standing, which is a decent sign that neither side has proved its case.
Should a beginner learn reversals from the start?
Most teachers say no, and the reasoning is practical rather than mystical. Seventy-eight cards is already a lot to hold in your head, and adding a second meaning for each one doubles the load before the first set is solid. Learn the upright cards until you can speak about each without checking a book. After that, adding reversals is a small step, because you are shading a meaning you already know rather than memorising a new one. If you want to start earlier, at least keep the reversed reading tied to the upright one instead of treating it as a separate card.
Keep going
- the full tarot card meanings
Your chart, computed rather than guessed
Real Vedic positions from the Swiss Ephemeris. No account needed.
Get my free Kundli