Not Reading in Reverse: Reading Tarot Your Own Way

There are many facets to one single image. The greatest example of this is shown in a deck of tarot cards.

The tarot card is a complex and wonderful thing that allows you to focus, meditate, and pick apart the wonderful imagery that is both obvious and not so obvious. It becomes an important tool in the arsenal of the reader and/or magical practitioner. What is truly magical is how we never stop learning, we never stop finding nuggets of treasure buried deep in the cards. However we use the cards, we find the ugly, the beautiful, the weird, and more often than not… we find the answers.

For many years, I avoided learning reversals because I felt disconnected from them. Occasionally, the cards would be reversed during a shuffle, but I would simply turn them back over and proceed. As for those pesky cards that jump out of the deck when shuffling - I just blamed it on my poor shuffle skills.

The thing was, I didn’t need the reversals. The upright cards showed me everything I needed. I genuinely felt like the whole picture was there for me to dissect and decipher.  Yet tarot books told me how I needed to read both the upright and reversed cards to make sense of any reading. I did not agree. I appreciated the layers, the emerging picture, and also the relationship with the cards next to them. Additionally, I was keen on delving deep into the symbols, and metaphors and expressing what I saw to answer my questions during a reading. I saw the darker aspects and I saw the light ones too. The poet in me felt illuminated by these cards in their upright position.

There is no criticism of people who read reversals as part of their readings, but those who are new to tarot may be overwhelmed by the idea of learning 78 cards and then learning them again in reverse. Many seasoned tarot readers have said they stopped reading their reversal cards because they saw shadow and light in the upright cards. Others said that the reversals hindered the reading and took away its flow.

Tarot readings are subjective. Our general knowledge of the cards is important to lay the groundwork, but we know that, just like art, they will evoke emotions, whether they are good, bad or neutral. A tarot card is neither black nor white and is essentially a puzzle waiting to be solved. Whether we solve this with our cards upright or reversed, it doesn’t really matter.