Reading Reversed Tarot Cards: Meanings, Methods and Examples

Turn over a card and find the Sun standing on its head, and most beginners feel a small jolt. Is the good news cancelled? Has the reading turned dark? The short answer is no. Reversals are one of the oldest layers of tarot reading, and once you understand how readers actually use them, they stop being alarming and start being useful. This page is the hub for everything reversal-related on tarotreading.co. It covers what a reversal is, the four methods readers rely on, whether you should use them at all, how to shuffle for them, and what some well-known cards tend to say when they land upside down.

What a reversed card actually is

Physically, a reversal is nothing more than orientation. A standard deck has 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana across the suits of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. When a reader allows reversals, each card can arrive in one of two positions, which gives 156 possible positions. It does not give 156 unrelated meanings. The reversed Eight of Pentacles is still about skill and steady work; it is the same card viewed from a different angle.

Reversals have been part of guidebook tradition for a long time. Reversed meanings appear in European cartomancy manuals from the late eighteenth century, and A. E. Waite’s 1910 companion to the Rider-Waite-Smith deck lists a reversed meaning for every card. That said, the cards themselves are older than any of this. Tarot began as a trick-taking card game in northern Italy in the 1430s, and the fortune-telling use of the deck came along centuries later, as Britannica’s overview of tarot explains. Reversed meanings, like upright meanings, are interpretive conventions that authors attached to the images. They are not laws, and no two guidebooks agree on every card.

It helps to hold one idea in mind throughout: a reversal changes how you look at a card, not what the future holds. The Three of Swords reversed does not promise that heartbreak is over any more than the upright card promises heartbreak is coming. Both are prompts for a conversation with yourself about what is happening now.

How to read any reversed card

The four common reading methods

Most readers use one of four approaches, and it pays to know all of them even if you settle on one. The table below runs each method past the same card, the Eight of Pentacles, which upright shows a craftsman carefully engraving a row of coins: steady effort, practice, and skill built over time.

Notice that the six readings in the table are different, and several contradict each other. That is why experienced readers decide on a method before they shuffle. If you let yourself choose the interpretation after seeing the card, you will tend to pick the one that confirms what you already believed, a habit psychologists call confirmation bias. Choosing in advance keeps the reading honest.

The “blocked” and “internalised” methods are the most popular among modern readers because they keep the card’s character intact and lead naturally to a question. The “opposite” method is the oldest and the simplest, but it produces blunt results: the Sun reversed becomes gloom, the Devil reversed becomes freedom, and the subtlety of the image gets lost. The “delayed or excessive” method rewards readers who like nuance, but it takes practice to tell “too much” from “not yet” in the same card.

Should you use reversals at all?

Here is something many beginners are relieved to hear: reversals are optional. Marseille-style readers often ignore them. Some Thoth deck readers use the astrological dignities of neighbouring cards instead. Many professional readers who work with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck read every card upright and let the surrounding cards supply the shade. There is no quality mark attached to using reversals, and no reading is more “advanced” because the cards are upside down.

• Use reversals if you already know the 78 upright meanings well enough to say them without a book.
• Use reversals if your readings often feel one-note and you want more shades of meaning without adding cards.
• Use reversals if you prefer a clear visual signal for “something is stuck here” rather than inferring it from context.
• Use reversals if you like yes-or-no questions and want a simple rule, with upright leaning yes and reversed leaning no, while remembering that the rule is a convention rather than a forecast.

• Skip reversals if you are still learning upright meanings; doubling the vocabulary too early slows most people down.
• Skip reversals if they make you anxious, so that a reading full of upside-down cards feels like a bad omen instead of a conversation.
• Skip reversals if your deck has a reversible back design that makes it hard to tell orientation, or if the art is symmetrical.
• Skip reversals if you read mostly with large spreads such as the Celtic Cross, where ten cards already give plenty of texture.

If you decide against reversals, be consistent about it. Turn any upside-down card the right way as you lay it out, and do not sneak a reversed meaning in when the upright one feels uncomfortable. If you decide for them, keep them in every reading for a month before judging whether they help you.

How to shuffle so reversals appear naturally

Cards do not reverse themselves. If you only overhand-shuffle a deck that started fully upright, it will stay upright forever. Readers who want reversals build a rotation into their shuffle, and they do it the same way every time so the mix is fair rather than staged.

1. Decide before you touch the deck. State to yourself whether this reading uses reversals and which method applies. This single habit removes most of the confusion reversals cause.
2. Rotate half the deck. Cut the deck into two roughly equal piles, turn one pile end over end, then riffle or overhand-shuffle the piles back together. Repeat two or three times so the orientation is well mixed.
3. Try the spread-and-swirl method. Spread the whole deck face down on the table and swirl the cards with both hands for thirty seconds, then gather them. This is the gentlest option for large or delicate decks and produces a natural mix of orientations.
4. Cut with a turn. After shuffling, cut into three piles and rotate the middle pile before restacking. Some readers do this as a ritual signal that the reading has begun.
5. Flip cards sideways, not top to bottom. When you turn a card over to reveal it, flip it like the page of a book, left to right. Flipping from the top edge reverses every card as you reveal it and scrambles your result.
6. Note your method in your journal. Write “reversals on, blocked method” at the top of the entry. When you look back in six months you will know exactly how you read that spread.

Worked examples with named cards

The fastest way to get comfortable with reversals is to watch them in action. Each example below uses the “blocked or internalised” family of methods unless stated otherwise, because that is the approach most guidebooks published since the 1970s favour.

The Sun reversed. Upright, the Sun shows a child on a white horse under a bright sky: joy, clarity, warmth, success that is visible to everyone. Reversed, the warmth is still there but something is dimming it. Perhaps you have achieved what you wanted and feel oddly flat, or you are hiding good news because you worry about how others will take it. A useful question: “What is stopping me from enjoying what is already going well?” Note that the Sun reversed is still one of the gentlest cards in the deck. It never means disaster.

Eight of Swords reversed. Upright, a bound and blindfolded figure stands among eight swords, hemmed in by a story she tells herself. Reversed, the binding loosens. Many readers treat this as a release card: the restriction was mostly mental, and you are starting to see the gaps between the swords. Question: “Which belief have I already started to doubt?”

Three of Cups reversed. Upright, three friends raise their cups in celebration. Reversed, the party is either cancelled or overdone. Using the delayed-or-excessive method, it can point to a celebration that keeps being postponed, or to a social life that has become exhausting. Using the internalised method, it suggests you are craving company but not asking for it. Question: “Who have I not called in a while, and why?”

Knight of Wands reversed. Upright, the Knight charges ahead on a rearing horse: enthusiasm, bold moves, travel, a project launched at speed. Reversed, the horse is going nowhere, or going everywhere at once. This often reads as energy without a direction, or a plan abandoned halfway. Question: “Which of my five new ideas actually deserves the next two weeks?”

The Hanged Man reversed. Upright, a figure hangs calmly by one foot, choosing to pause and see the world differently. Reversed, the pause is being refused or has gone on too long. It can mean stalling, resisting a necessary wait, or finally being ready to come down from the tree. Question: “Is this a pause I chose, or one I am hiding in?”

Ten of Swords reversed. Upright, this is one of the most dramatic images in the deck: a figure face down with ten swords in his back under a black sky, while dawn breaks on the horizon. Reversed, most readers soften it: the worst has already happened and recovery is beginning, slowly. Some use the opposite method and read it as refusing to admit something has ended. Question: “What ending am I still carrying around as if it were news?”

The Tower reversed. Upright, lightning strikes a crown from a tower and two figures fall: sudden change, a structure that could not hold. Reversed, the change is resisted, delayed, or arrives in smaller shocks instead of one big one. It can also mean you are the one holding the walls up by force. Question: “What am I propping up that would be easier to let fall?”

Queen of Pentacles reversed. Upright, the Queen sits in a garden with a rabbit at her feet, caring for her home and body with easy generosity. Reversed, that care is missing, usually for herself. Readers often see burnout, skipped meals, or a home that has become a workplace. Question: “What would I tell a friend who was living the way I am living this week?”

Across all eight examples, notice the pattern. The reversal never introduces a stranger. It takes a card you already know and asks what happens when its energy is stuck, hidden, overdone, or ready to be released. That is why learning upright meanings first is the best investment a new reader can make, and why the reversed vocabulary comes quickly once those foundations are in place.

Reversals and the so-called bad cards

Beginners often worry about the opposite case: what if a frightening card lands reversed? Does the Devil reversed mean a worse Devil? In almost every tradition, the answer is the reverse. Death reversed is read as change resisted or delayed; the Devil reversed as a habit loosening its grip; the Three of Swords reversed as the first stage of healing after a hurt. The upright versions are not sentences either, as the hub on difficult cards explains, but reversals of these cards tend to be among the gentler readings in the deck. If a reading full of reversed Swords frightens you, close the deck, write down the question that prompted the reading, and come back when you can read calmly. A reading should never feel like a threat.

A short practice to build confidence

Try this for two weeks. Each morning, shuffle with reversals on and draw one card. Say its upright meaning aloud. If it is reversed, apply the blocked method and write one question in your journal. Do not try to predict the day. In the evening, write two lines about whether the question was useful. After fourteen days, read the entries back. Most people find that about half the reversed questions pointed at something real and the other half did not, which is a healthy result. The cards are prompting reflection, not forecasting events, and a journal is the honest way to see that.

Related reading

• Understanding a Reversed Tarot Card
• When the Six of Cups Is Reversed
• Interpreting the Difficult Tarot Cards
• Tarot Cards for Beginners
• How to Shuffle Tarot Cards
• How Accurate Are Tarot Card Readings?
• Introduction to Tarot Cards and How They Work

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