AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before I cover the subject of the header, I should mention the general belief that reversal of any card can redirect its upright meaning into unfamiliar byways and thus invite misapprehension. This is one of a host of related interpretations for reversal that I gathered a few years ago, specifically in the following entry from one of fifteen sub-categories:

“Subtle” or unobtrusive; veiled; “behind the scenes,” perhaps not known until it’s too late; implied; suggested; hard to pin down; questionable; devious; misleading; underhanded; manipulative; evasive; furtive; reticent; illusory; imaginary; unique; concealed; latent; finesse but also guile; a hidden enemy or agenda; the “Devil you don’t know.”.

Among the Major Arcana, there are two cards that stand out in this regard and three that deserve mention: the Devil, the Moon, the Hanged Man, the High Priestess and the Magician. In accordance with Waite’s divinatory meanings, the court cards in the suit of Cups, particularly the Knight (“trickery”) and Page (“deception”) when reversed, are the “prime suspects” for dissembling, and a few of the Minor Arcana belong in the population, once again using Waite’s definitions, notably the 7 of Cups (“strange and insubstantial” presentments, the 7 of Swords (“design,” meaning artifice) and the 9 of Swords (“deception”).

The Devil, of course, is the “master of duplicity,” and the Moon approaches the same degree of infamy through distortion of reality. The Hanged Man offers a canted perspective that may ring false in its insincerity, while the High Priestess – while not malicious – is characteristically indirect and the Magician conveys unprincipled opportunism rooted in distraction. With all of these cards there is a danger of being manipulated if their arrival drives home a contrary agenda.

The Knight and Page of Cups are at their worst when upside-down but, across the board, the non-confrontational Cups royalty refrains from sticking its neck out and may just allow a mistaken impression to stand rather than get in the middle of correcting it. (They are the paragons of “Let sleeping dogs lie.”) For their part, the Wands nobility can be painfully honest, the Swords aristocracy are sticklers for precision. and the Pentacles courtiers are indifferent to the distinction and just mind their own business.

The 7 of Cups and the 7 of Swords are the chief antagonists among the “pip” cards when it comes to potential dishonesty, while the 9 of Swords is the phantasmagorical “stuff of nightmares.” A couple of other cards, the 8 of Cups and 8 of Swords, are also in the running, especially in their Thoth versions titled “Indolence” and “Interference” that are more of a distraction than a direct subversion of purpose. (Aleister Crowley considered the Sevens and Eights to convey reciprocal forms of imbalance.) While there are a number of other unsympathetic pips (e.g the 3 of Swords as “Sorrow;” the 5 of Cups as “Disappointment; the 5 of Swords as “Defeat; and the 7 of Disk as “Failure”), they are less devious in import and don’t rise to the same level of moral turpitude; they may exude desperation and dismay, but not cynical disillusionment. They’re certainly nasty but they aren’t perversely so.

All of these cards embrace the idea that something about the subject of inquiry may not be what it seems, and there is always a chance of being misled, either by circumstances or by other people involved. With some of them the need for caution is transparent, while with other it is only implied but still present.