Learning to Read Reversals

In the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, Arthur Edward Waite acknowledged reversed meanings in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), listing them card by card, though his treatment was brief and often simply labelled them 'unfavourable.' That shorthand has stuck in popular culture ever since—and it has done readers a disservice.

A reversal is better understood as a modifier, not a verdict. The upright card tells you what energy is present. The reversal tells you how it is functioning. Is it flipped on its head? Running at full blast? Stuck behind a wall? Or showing up in an early, unfinished form? Those are four meaningfully different situations, and they call for four different responses.

In Tarot for Your Self (1984), Mary K. Greer developed a workbook approach to tarot that treated each card as a mirror for self-examination rather than a fortune-telling device. Her four reversal modes are the most precise tool in print for interpreting a card that lands upside down. Here is how each mode works:

1. OPPOSITE — The card's core meaning is inverted. What it normally promises is now absent or denied. The Sun reversed in Opposite mode: joy withheld, inner warmth switched off, a season of bleakness rather than radiance.

2. EXCESSIVE — The card's energy is present but overdone. The Empress reversed in Excessive mode becomes what might be called smother-mother energy—care that wraps so tightly around another person that it consumes rather than nourishes; nurture deployed as a form of control.

3. BLOCKED — The card's quality is there, pressing against an obstacle it cannot clear. The Lovers reversed in Blocked mode: a choice that must be made but keeps being deferred until the window closes. Strength reversed in Blocked mode: self-doubt quietly starving the inner courage that the upright card depicts.

4. UNDERDEVELOPED — The card's energy exists but is immature, raw, or just emerging. Think of it as the quality in its first trimester: real, but not yet functional.

Source: Mary K. Greer, Tarot for Your Self (1984).

The four modes are only useful if you have a method for picking between them. Two tools do most of the work:

Spread position tells you the context. A reversal in a 'what is blocking you' position almost always points to the Blocked mode—the position has already told you something is obstructed. A reversal in a 'current energy' position is more open and may fit any of the four modes. A reversal in an 'outcome' position often leans toward Opposite or Underdeveloped, since the energy hasn't fully arrived yet.

Surrounding cards confirm or redirect your initial read. If The Sun lands reversed next to the Three of Swords and the Ten of Wands, Blocked or Opposite fits: something heavy is shutting the light out. If it lands next to the Ace of Cups and the Two of Cups, you might read it as Underdeveloped—joy is nascent, not yet fully felt.

For a deeper look at how surrounding cards interact, see the guide on reading cards in combination and the reference page /combinations. For the full technical reference on reversals, see /reversals.

These examples apply the modes concretely. Notice how each card's upright meaning is preserved—only the mode of operation changes.

The Sun reversed — Blocked mode The Sun upright depicts unconditional warmth, vitality, and the unguarded delight of a child on horseback. Reversed and Blocked, that warmth is present but obstructed—perhaps by depression, burnout, or an environment that shamed the expressive inner life into silence. The light has not gone; it is behind cloud.

The Empress reversed — Excessive mode The Empress upright represents fertile, generous care. Reversed and Excessive, that generosity has tipped into something suffocating: caregiving that demands gratitude, nurture that doubles as control. The recipient of this care is not fed by it; they are consumed.

The Lovers reversed — Blocked mode The Lovers upright depicts a consequential choice made clearly and fully. Reversed and Blocked, the choice is being actively avoided. The refusal to decide is itself a decision—one that, held too long, lets the opportunity expire.

Strength reversed — Blocked mode Strength upright shows patient, disciplined courage: the figure calming the lion through presence rather than force. Reversed and Blocked, self-doubt has been chipping at that courage for so long that the lion within is underfed, weakened. The capacity is still there; access to it is not.

Not all traditions use reversals. The Tarot de Marseille was historically read with cards oriented consistently; Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) introduced reversed meanings in the late eighteenth century as part of his cartomantic system, but many modern Marseille practitioners still read uprights only, using the surrounding cards and the querent's question to carry the full interpretive weight.

In Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris's Thoth Tarot (The Book of Thoth, 1944), the court cards are renamed and the system of elemental dignities—cards strengthening or weakening each other based on their elemental attributions—does significant work that reversals might otherwise do. Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (1980) bridges both worlds, discussing reversals while also emphasising card narrative and symbolic weight.

If you read a tradition that does not use reversals, Greer's four modes still apply: you can ask the same questions (is this energy blocked, excessive, or underdeveloped?) and let position and context carry them, without physically rotating any card.

Learning reversals is a matter of repetition with a consistent framework. Here is a simple progression:

1. Single-card daily draws — Draw one card each morning including reversals. Before looking up any meaning, apply the four modes: which one fits the mood of your day as you know it so far? Note your answer and check it in the evening.

2. Three-card spreads — Use a three-card layout (situation / action / outcome or mind / body / spirit). When a reversal appears, let its position guide your mode choice first, then check against the other two cards.

3. Celtic Cross — This ten-card spread is the best training ground for reversals because it gives you multiple positions with distinct roles (crossing card, hopes/fears, outcome) and a rich field of surrounding cards to cross-reference.

4. Journaling — Greer's Tarot for Your Self is explicitly a journaling workbook. After each reading, write down which mode you chose, why, and what the card said as a result. This record becomes your personal reversal lexicon.

For the structural how-to of these spreads, see /spreads. To see how reversals fit into a full reading workflow, see the guide reading-reversals.