AUTHOR’S NOTE: Over the years I’ve formulated and applied my own style of reversed-card interpretation, and I finally concluded that inversion of the image doesn’t materially alter the core meaning of the upright presentation, just redirects it in various subtle ways as detailed in my nearly two dozen previous essays on the subject. The required change in perspective lies more in the diviner’s sensitive deciphering of the implicit advice than in the fact that it arrives obliquely. But I recently came across one I haven’t addressed.
The assumption is that the phenomenon of reversal shows “undeveloped potential” regarding a card’s usual mode of operation, requiring that we pick apart its more rarefied nuances to see how the promised opportunity or threatened liability might be visited upon us when it isn’t immediately apparent. I stop short of the “undeveloped” premise because I don’t think a card’s normal functionality is ever fully negated by reversal, although it may be less pronounced in its expression.
In the past I’ve called this redirection “changing the mode of delivery and angle of attack” for the energy, such that it may sneak up on us when we’re not looking. But if the potential were truly nascent, it would never show itself in the matter at all, either upright or reversed. For this reason I settled on “underdeveloped” as the best way to describe its reversal. While it may be “lurking under the table,” it should still be visible if we know where to look for it.
This speaks to another of my metaphors for reversed-card analysis: “Turning over rocks to see what crawls out from underneath.” This intriguing challenge explains why I’ve never bought into the notion that reading reversals is both unnecessary and cumbersome. While all related meanings – both fortunate and unfortunate – are indeed encoded in a given card, I find it notable that reversal can serve as a shortcut to locating and extracting the latter without having to parse every last detail in the card’s litany of possible definitions. I have better things to do with the rest of my life than puzzle over such minutiae when there is a convenient “filter” to simplify the task.
This approach substantially reduces the amount of time and effort (as well as the head-scratching and intuitive guesswork) involved in figuring out what the less salutary message might be in a typically positive card like the Sun or the Star. I call it “cutting right to the chase,” and the insights obtained can be invaluable in acquiring a thorough understanding of the tarot’s less-traveled byways that might otherwise remain unexplored.
At least in theory, all it takes is modifying a card’s upright meaning with one of the common adjectives describing the consequences of reversal: delayed, blocked, diminished, distracted, unexpected, concealed, ambiguous, suppressed, internalized, passive and a host of others in a similar vein. In practice, it’s obviously not as straightforward as simple keyword conflation but this exercise in “adjectivication” provides a reasonable starting point for coming to grips with the concept. (Follow the link below to access my exhaustive multi-part study of the subject.)
To beginners I would suggest “Take your time when tackling reversals but don’t ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ based solely on what you hear from self-styled experts.” To more seasoned diviners I would say “Don’t be too smug in your dismissal. There is always more to learn, and you might be surprised.”
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