AUTHOR’S NOTE: I really need a new tarot book. Right now I’m re-reading Paul Fenton-Smith’s Tarot Master-Class, which I believe has been revised, re-titled and republished since I bought it. This is not a bad experience, just a redundant one, but it has brought me face-to-face once again with his premise that encountering a reversed card in a reading means that we have unfinished business with the previous upright card in the numerical series and must go back to complete the lesson we failed to learn before we can progress any further. (In other words, we got ahead of ourselves and blundered into unfamiliar and perhaps unfriendly territory.) The purpose of doing so is to acquire the wisdom that will let us figuratively turn the present reversed card right-side-up and thus absorb its lesson. I’m tempted to bin this curious notion in the “excessive overthinking” category, but it’s worth a deeper look.

I know it’s not what the author intended, but to me this proposed remedy signals a “retreat,” as if by shifting our focus away from the puzzle even briefly to ponder its antecedents, it will magically unriddle itself and we can then continue on our way. This amounts to dodging an obligation to our future development when we should just “man up” and face the upset condition at the time it occurs. Although we can certainly make an effort to overcome past deficiencies as a stipulation for current recovery, delaying resolution while we chase them down won’t promptly address the issue, just give us an excuse for downplaying its urgency.

When confronted with reversal, I believe maintaining a resolute forward thrust of the chin rather than burying it in our chest with downcast eyes is the right posture to assume. I don’t intend to hide from my inadequacies, past or present, and I insist that neither should my clients if the specter of denial surfaces in a reading. In my exhaustive catalogue of reversed-card definitions, I described this stratagem as “Avoidance,” as in literally “looking the other way;” “head in the sand;” a “Hanged Man moment,” sacrificing time and initiative; procrastination; “sitting on one’s hands;” denial; “blame-shifting;” passive-aggressive resistance.

I’m partial to the idea of “advancing” in these situations. Using Fenton-Smith’s paradigm, I would warily sidestep the obstacle represented by a reversed card and seek the next upright card in the series as “throwing me a rope” to haul myself up out of the morass without having to wade all the way through it once I know what I’m up against. The lesson to be learned is therefore one of not wasting energy on futile dithering over “spilt milk” but instead raising our sights to the horizon ahead and soldiering on without looking back.*

To be honest, this solution won’t always work, a fact that the “one-two punch” of the 9 and 10 of Swords illustrates because the sequence suggests “jumping out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.” But in considering the Waite-Smith example of the reversed 9 of Swords, it looks to me like the distraught individual could carefully climb down the ladder of horizontal swords to the bottom and then pause to assess how to proceed into the treacherous domain of the Ten before being rudely thrust into it.

The implied wounding of the upright 10 of Swords may still occur, but there will at least be a premonition of what to expect and a chance to steel ourselves against the trauma. In short, there will be no “blindsiding” as would occur when we hide our face in our hands and avert our gaze, and the consequences may wind up being less severe. The impact of the reversed Nine can thus be accommodated in a useful way, although I recognize that the individual on the card will be “facing the wrong way” when upside-down. Let’s call it a case of inadvertent rather than willful disregard of the circumstances that will most likely emerge in the as-yet-unrevealed Ten, but in either case the recognition of our incapacity will serve to “take the blinders off.”

*Full Disclosure: This supplemental card won’t normally appear in the spread at hand, it is a philosophical “footnote” to the interpretation just like Fenton-Smith’s proposal but in the opposite direction. His opinion seems to be that when reversal occurs in a spread, it is part of a past-and-present continuum within the series that can be dipped into for more insight. In my alternative view it can also communicate the assumed trajectory of future conditions that is insinuated as part of the overall experience rather than stated outright. Unlike exploiting known prior events, the opportunity may arise only in theory and not in reality, but the potential exists to make creative use of the influence. In a reading, I might employ it as a side-trip into further contemplation of ways to integrate the oblique energy. Maybe a reversed card tells only half the tale and the “rest of the story” will be filled in by its upright successor in the normal progression. (Hmm, I think I like that one.)