AUTHOR’S NOTE: Every once in a while I encounter another self-anointed expert who insists that reversed-card meanings must not be used with the Thoth tarot and other Golden-Dawn-based decks, and that Elemental Dignity is the only permissible method for judging the fortunate or unfortunate complexion of the cards in a reading beyond their intrinsic stand-alone characteristics. This is a widely-held and fiercely defended position that is mostly empty rhetoric and it keeps coming back like the proverbial “bad penny.”

I’ve been using the Thoth deck since 1972, and have been applying reversed-card meanings the whole time (although my opinion of their significance has changed radically over the intervening decades). In my case, I had the deck but not the companion Book of Thoth for the first year of my tarot journey so I used Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed for guidance, and reversals were a part of her interpretive protocol. However, when I finally got my hands on the BoT, and a bit later the Golden Dawn’s Liber T tarot curriculum, I found no mention of reversals, either pro or con, in either one. The nay-sayers obviously feel that this silence reinforces their claim but, in his early tarot writing, MacGregor Mather’s, the Golden Dawn’s chief adept and main architect, was strongly influenced by Jean-Baptiste Alliette (aka “Etteilla”), who invented the concept of reversal, so I can only assume that Mathers thought the subject wasn’t worth mentioning explicitly, not that reversals were to be avoided at all costs. As for Crowley, his mind operated at an entirely different level.

In practice, Elemental Dignities (EDs) and reversals serve two different purposes. EDs alter the potency of a card (called the “principal”) that sits between two adjacent cards (labeled “modifiers”) according to whether those surrounding cards are elementally “friendly,” “neutral” or “unfriendly” to the middle card and to each other.* The experience of a card that sports agreeable and supportive companions is often greatly amplified in its potency (“for good or ill according to its nature”), while that of a card with unsympathetic partners is substantially restrained. (It resembles the difference between a cup of strong black coffee and a cup of weak tea.) The basic quality of the card doesn’t change, just the magnitude of its expression. In some cases, “ill dignity” can weaken a nasty card and make its impact less severe while “favorable dignity” might well exaggerate its harsh nature by giving it a boost, but in both cases its inherent characteristics are still evident in modulated form. Dignity should therefore be viewed as strong or weak, not necessarily positive or negative; only the synthesized meaning of the three cards can give that testimony, while dignity merely adds emphasis or “shading.”

Reversal, on the other hand, can change the “angle of attack” or “mode of delivery” for a card’s influence, mainly skewing its arrival while leaving its potency untouched and its core meaning largely intact. The experience of the card’s energy may be more oblique than direct, thus it is the querent’s reaction to the reversal that undergoes change according to how the effects are received; their thrust may come in under the radar but their fundamental principles are still operative and should not be downplayed. Think of coffee with cream and sugar or tea with honey and lemon; the flavor profile is substantially altered but it is still recognizable, and the delivery of the caffeine may be masked but its presence is still felt. (In an alternate universe, Mary Poppins might have said “A spoonful of mystery makes the message go down.”) The implication is that reversal can add necessary subtlety and nuance to the querent’s response because more direct engagement would not be productive even if it is achievable. It would be like trying push a string or squeeze a handful of water.

Just as the phenomenon of random reversal represents a fundamental divide in the way cards appear in a reading, it creates a similar division in the thinking of tarot enthusiasts beyond those who are too “green” in the practice to attempt figuring out what they could possibly mean. It’s not uncommon to assume that they amount to nothing more than an accident of the shuffle, and some readers even arrange the deck to avoid them entirely. Certain decks, like the Tarot de Marseille and the Lenormand, work quite well without them. But I’m of the opinion that if something as basic as mixed orientation can occur in a spread, we should probably pay attention; the Universe may be trying to tell us something. I just had the random thought that reversed cards suggest the kind of “on/off” switch that is used in binary computer logic, the aggregate of which in a line of code yields information that relies as much on the “off” bits in the electronic circuit as on those that are turned “on” by the logic. I’m going to play with that idea and will have more to say about it in a future post.

*Elementally friendly pairs are Fire/Fire; Fire/Air; Water/Water; Water/Earth; Air/Air and Earth/Earth. Unfriendly pairs are Fire/Water and Air/Earth. Neutral but mutually supportive pairs are Fire/Earth and Water/Air. Fire relates to Wands; Water to Cups; Air to Swords and Earth to Pentacles.