Tarot Reversals for Beginners: Five Approaches to Reading Upside-Down Cards

By Leeza Robertson

Many people don't know what to do when a card appears upside down in a tarot spread. This book helps you become more comfortable and confident when these topsy-turvy cards dance into your readings. Join author Leeza Robertson as she explores five distinct areas of energy related to reversals: blocks, protection, mirror, shadow, and retrograde. This system of reading reversals is a simple way to deepen your connection to the cards and receive the guidance they have to offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: May 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780738757384

Leeza Robertson

Leeza Robertson is an international bestselling author with Llewellyn Worldwide. She is a girl from the Aussie bush living her best life in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her wife. When she is not writing books or creating decks, she is helping other writers bring their dream of publishing into reality. Connect with Leeza on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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About the Author

Leeza Robertson spends more time with tarot cards than she does with real people. You will find her hidden away in nice warm cozy corners with piles of decks and books around her. She spends her days dreaming up new decks and exploring ways to introduce more people to the world of tarot. When she doesn’t have her nose inside a book or her fingers dancing across a deck of cards, she is hiking, traveling, and finding new books to stick her nose into. Connect with Leeza on Twitter: @Leeza_Robertson.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Tarot Reversals for Beginners: Five Approaches to Reading Upside-Down Cards © 2018 by Leeza Robertson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition © 2018

E-book ISBN: 9780738757384

Cover art: Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Barbara Moore and Eugene Smith © 2014, Llewellyn Publications

Cover design: Shira Atakpu

Interior card art: Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Barbara Moore and Eugene Smith © 2014, Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robertson, Leeza, author.

Title: Tarot reversals for beginners : five approaches to reading upside-down

cards / by Leeza Robertson.

Description: First Edition. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018010936 (print) | LCCN 2017061508 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738757384 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738752716 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Tarot.

Classification: LCC BF1879.T2 (print) | LCC BF1879.T2 R6133 2017 (ebook) |

DDC 133.3/2424—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010936

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

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Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

contents

Introduction

Chapter One: More Than Upside Down

Chapter Two: The Major Arcana

Chapter Three: The Court Cards

Chapter Four: The Minor Arcana

Chapter Five: Reversed with Purpose: Spreads and Spells

Appendix One: The Cards-by-Numbers Cheat Sheet

Appendix Two: Planets and Cards Cheat Sheet

Acknowledgments

To my loving wife,

thank you for constantly turning my world upside down and making me see things from a new and different perspective.

introduction

What to do with tarot reversals is one of those topics that comes up a lot in tarot lessons, groups, and conferences, yet not a lot of people know what to do with an upside-down card. Which, to be honest, is fair enough because there really isn’t much in the way of literature about upside-down, topsy-turvy reversed cards. They get touched on very loosely in most tarot companion books, and there are only a handful of tarot books dedicated to reading the cards any other way but up. No wonder people are often left scratching their heads. Some people choose to ignore these cards altogether and just turn them right-side up. Some just start their readings all over again in the hopes that no upside-down cards will make their way into the reading or spread. It doesn’t help that hardly any decks are actually designed with reversals in mind. I should know—I searched high and low for cards that were designed to be read just as clearly upside down as they were upright.

This says a lot about how we all like to view the world: up the right way and in some sort of rational, logical order. The strange thing is, this is not how we actually experience the physical world outside of us. Our perception is questionable at best, and 80 percent of the time we make decisions, take action, and run our lives on our habitual intuitive programing. This basic survival operating system is referred to as System 1 in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Nothing about System 1 is logical, rational, or even right-side up. It does, however, keep us alive. To really dig deeper and tap into the rational part of our mind, we need to switch from System 1 to System 2. This, according to Kahneman, is where our complex understanding comes from and where we make the most informed decisions. It is also somewhere we don’t stay for very long. Working extensively with our System-2 thinking exhausts us and makes us feel depleted. An upside-down card, however, triggers a disturbance in the Force and makes us switch from System 1 to System 2, hence why this seems more difficult and taxing and why we prefer things when they appear right-side up. Yet here in the world of tarot, just like in the rest of the world, we have yet to truly come to terms with the fact that we spend most of our physical life looking at things in reverse. Instead, we view them through the lens of basic survival rather than through the complex lens of rationality.

This would explain why the question that I hear the most about tarot reversals and the question that really prompted me to take on this topic is Can a reversed card be wrong? The short answer in my mind is no.

Let me explain with the long version.

It matters not if you are meticulous or messy with the orientation of your deck. If a reversal presents itself, it is in the right direction and the right position all the time, every time, without fail. It is important to remember that the cards themselves have no hidden agenda or bias. They simply show up in accordance with the vibrational energy of the question and the querent. Of course, that energy can and does shift over time. But in that moment when you draw your cards, this is the answer, guidance, or solution the cards believed was in alignment with the question you asked. Whether or not you are happy about what has showed up is irrelevant, and, to be honest, the only time someone really redraws their cards is because they did not like or did not understand the answer. Neither makes the cards wrong—it merely points out your attachment to being right.

My aim with this book is to give you more tools to work with when these upside-down, topsy-turvy cards dance into your readings. It is not a definitive work on reversals, as there are just as many ways to look at an upside-down card as there is a right-way-up card. It is, however, a start. It’s a beginning point to get you more comfortable with accessing the lessons, knowledge, and wisdom these types of cards bring to a reading. In many ways this is a beginner book, for it won’t deal with complex theories or higher levels of tarot understanding. It is merely a simple guide to exploring reversed cards, to make sense of cards that often leave the tarot newbies scratching their heads and wondering what it all means. In this book I will mainly be referencing Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot, for its closeness to the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. However, every so often I will make reference to other decks, including The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot. This deck has some outstanding images in reverse, though there is little to nothing about reversed cards in the companion book to this deck. If this book brings you more confidence and enthusiasm when dealing with reversed cards, then I have done my job with this text.

I have broken this book up into five chapters so it is easier for you to navigate. Chapter one introduces you to the topic and the framework for the rest of the book. Chapter two is the major arcana, and in chapter three you will find the court cards. Chapter four is the minors, which I have broken up into their number vibrations, and chapter five brings the book together with spells and spreads. Two appendices offer cheat sheets for your personal quick reference.

The system of reading reversals that you currently hold in your hands is my creation. It is a system that I have developed over the years to help me and my students make a deeper connection to the cards themselves. It has also helped my students and clients reconsider the deeper guidance the cards have to offer. It allows them to explore their own beliefs, bias, and limited thinking. My hope is that it does the same for you.

You will notice I have worked heavily with numerology in this book. I have done this so you have another way of looking at the cards. The numerology will also help build a new pathway for understanding reversals. Think of it as a grounding trigger for your memory.

Keep in mind that this book is a guide only. There are just as many ways to read a reversal as there are to read an upright card. What you have in your hands right now is a clear and concise road map of five of those ways. No more, no less—just five. So pick up your deck, flip it upside down, and let the topsy-turvy dance begin.

[contents]

one

More Than Upside Down

When a card lands in your reading reversed, there is more going on here than just the appearance of an upside-down card. In many respects, this upside-down or reversed card has some important information for you that goes far beyond the fact that it is the wrong way up. Just as there are many ways to read an upright card, there are numerous ways to interpret an upside-down card.

In this chapter, we are going to explore five aspects of reversed cards. This will give you a larger framework to pull from when one of these stray cards wanders into one of your readings or daily draws. These five aspects will set the tone for the rest of this book, and each card will have an explanation for all the following aspects of a reversed card. You may find that one of these aspects speaks to you more than the others do in relation to your question. Or perhaps all five give you a larger view of both the problem and the solution. In many respects you will use the information in this book on an intuitive level. You will know which aspect or aspects are right for the answer you seek.

The five aspects we will be exploring are as follows:

• blocked

• protection

• mirror

• shadow

• retrograde

To the untrained eye the above list might just look like different words with the same meaning. But the reality is the slight differences between them are vitally important. Understanding these differences is going to be your greatest tool for becoming comfortable and even confident with dealing with upside-down cards. So let’s take a closer look at these five very distinct areas of energy, flow, and understanding.

Blocked

This one seems simple enough, as a blockage means there is no flow. Nothing is able to move forward, and, therefore, things have come to a standstill. But there is a little more to a blockage than just nothing getting through: all that energy and creativity are still flowing. They’re just getting stuck. This stuck energy or idea has to go somewhere, and usually it starts to expand outward from wherever the blockage actually is. The blockage can only expand so far before it begins to create great strain, stress, and pressure. Eventually, that pressure is going to build up until it causes an explosion or a rupture—and not necessarily where you think it should.

Stress fractures, tears, and holes can result anywhere energy is trapped, which makes the cards around the reversal that much more important. These surrounding cards could be warning you of an impending explosion, especially if the Tower is present in the reading. They could also be showing you exactly where the damage occurred and how all of this got so messy in the first place. Knowing there is a blockage is one thing. Knowing the damage it can and does cause is another. A blocked card gives you a way to assess damage control either before or after the event.

Protection

In many respects, I find this aspect of upside-down cards to be very liberating. For if we see a card through the protection approach, it means the card has slowed us down or stopped us dead in our tracks for a reason. Think about how having cards in a protection aspect can actually be beneficial to your reading and your outcome. Think about how many times you have asked the question How much longer? in a reading. This impatience is in all of us, yet getting to where we think we want to be in the shortest possible time is not always the best thing that could happen to us or those around us. With a card in the protection aspect, we get the opportunity to see what we would miss if we continued on our rush to the finish line path.

When I think about a card in the protection aspect, I think of divine intervention. You may call it the hand of God or the work of your angels, but no matter what you call it, the result will always be the same. The protection aspect of the card is saving us from some sort of calamity or despair that we with our limited perception cannot see. What a blessing!

Let’s put it in a more practical form. Have you ever been late for work or an appointment because something or someone delayed you? Your alarm didn’t go off or one of your kids suddenly took ill or your spouse took up a little more of your time then you had hoped. One of these things delayed you, pushed your schedule back, or made you change your plans. Then in hindsight you realized that the delay actually saved you from an accident or some other challenge. This is what a card in the protection aspect does. It diverts the energy around the point of chaos or pain and instead allows you to get to where you were headed all along in one piece.

Mirror

A mirror image is really what a reversal is, as it is the same as the upright image yet with a different orientation. Left becomes right, right becomes left, and everything seems similar but feels completely different. Obviously, this term comes from the reflection we see of ourselves in an actual mirror, but it can be seen in water or these days via webcam. Being on a live stream is always disconcerting to me; I really do get a little weirded out by the mirror image I have to look at while I am doing online events. This slight shift to the perception of our reality is sometimes all an upside-down card can be showing. In other words, a reversal could be asking you, What is similar but different? or What feels like it is out of whack with everything else?

When we look at a reversal as a mirror, we are not looking at a blockage of energy. Instead we are shifting our perception to notice subtleties and slight infractions on what we think we know, and it stretches us out of our comfort zone. This is why mirror work is so powerful in healing work. The mirror is a point of self-reflection both literally and metaphorically. When we hold a mirror to ourselves, we seem like ourselves but not like ourselves, and we get the opportunity to communicate to a reflection that may be broken, hurting, or in need of acknowledgment. The same is true for the cards. When we look at them as mirrors, we are asking them to share with us a moment of self-realization through the reflective process. This will make more sense as we move through the cards themselves.

Shadow

When dealing with archetypal energy, we must always look for the shadow aspect. The side of the archetype that is less than desirable, the part of the self that one would rather hide. Carl Jung called this shadow aspect the unknown dark side of the personality, and just like a blockage, it will eventually burst its way into our conscious reality. The shadow aspect will find ways to imprint itself on one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. The more this shadow is repressed or denied, the larger and more destructive these imprints become. Anger tends to alter our behavior and invites us to become resentful, vengeful, and even isolated. When we are not dealing with our anger in a healthy fashion and we allow it to become an attachment, we create shadow forms around our victim archetype.

Seeing a reversed card as a shadow aspect allows you to see what attachments you have and what they are creating in your life. All attachments bring suffering in one form or another, which makes dealing with this shadow energy so important. You can actually use these reversed cards as part of a larger healing process, for when you detach yourself from suffering, you start seeing joy and opportunity in your life. This allows you to move out of a shadow archetype like the victim into a more empowered aspect of yourself. This will make more sense as we work with the shadow aspects of the cards. You will see more clearly how these can be points of healing and how they can move you from despair to hope.

Retrograde

You may have heard the term retrograde in respect to planets, but what about for tarot cards? The idea of a card being in retrograde may very well be a new concept to most of you, but keep an open mind. When planets retrograde, they are said to appear as if traveling backward. There is a key word here—appear. When a card shows up in the retrograde aspect, things may appear to be going backward. But there is a reason, and you need to pay very close attention. This can mean that it is time to go back over the information you already have or that you need to literally backtrack over the very path you just walked because you missed something.

There is one more important component of a retrograde period: stillness. It is said that in the beginning and ending of these planetary cycles the planets slow down so much they appear to have stopped. How often do you just sit silent and still with information, people, situations, or anything, really? When a card comes up in a retrograde aspect, stillness will be required. Perhaps you could see this as a way of becoming a detached observer in your own life or current situation. For when we have to backtrack, go over already known content, or sit still, there is a high level of awareness that must be activated in order for us to gain what