Going Off-Script: Reversed Cards as “Gradients”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve been involved in another online discussion about the use of reversed (upside-down) cards in tarot reading. The comment I offered was my standard response reflecting over fifty years of working with reversals, but the dialogue provided some fresh insights that I will explore here.
I’ve been reading reversals since I started practicing tarot in 1972, and have developed a highly nuanced approach to them that in most cases doesn’t assign negative connotations. I think of them as merely altering the “mode of delivery” and “angle of attack” for a card’s usual meaning. Its influence might fly under the radar or enter at an indirect or oblique angle, and it could convey understated but no less potent implications that might sneak up on us and therefore demand extra vigilance.
How we receive and process this roundabout input is key to managing its impact. Therein lies its potential difficulty, but also its anticipatory solution: an “eyes-wide-open” posture and a need to “watch your back” even if the card is relatively benign. There are few absolutes with reversal and the focus can wander, with an alarming habit of going astray when we least expect it.
In thinking about this, I recognized that over the past couple of years, whenever I throw a tarot spread, I invariably look at the cards first as raw (that is, unfiltered or unalloyed) energy that will manifest its essential meaning regardless of orientation. In a sense, it “is what it is” and there is no advantage — at least at this point — in trying to finesse it. This preliminary snapshot establishes the pattern’s linear energy signature that will flow through the narrative from beginning to end.
A non-scenic or semi-scenic deck works best for this high-level overview, a “pip” deck like the Tarot de Marseille in the first case and the “glorified pips” of the Thoth deck in the second, because there is little in the way of “canned narrative vignettes” to interfere with or hijack the emerging profile with their anecdotal incongruity; in essence, the explicit images take a back seat to the dynamic thrust of the scenario until called for in the detailed analysis.
After making this global assessment, I will begin examining the spread for “qualifiers.” The combined influence of the cards as they play off one another is the critical feature that dictates whether there will be an uneventful or stressful evolution in the matter, and the elemental interaction of adjacent cards (a phenomenon I call “mutual attunement”) helps to flesh out the picture. But at the underlying conceptual level, these cards — according to suit, element, number and rank — convey the primary tone of the reading, after which everything else is descriptive shading.
Then I turn to orientation. Given my belief that the core meaning of a card is not dramatically affected by reversal and its general import will shine through regardless, I’ve begun applying my concept of “obliquity” to the notion that anything causing a perturbation in its natural expression does little more than place an off-normal “gradient” (by definition an up, down or sideways slope) in its path, an effect that might impede its smooth arrival or slightly redirect its emphasis but will not otherwise affect its interpretation. This minor disruption could nudge the story-line briefly off-script before it reasserts itself in subsequent upright cards, a consequence that can be read as a mild situational corrective or “breather” — a pause to regroup and look things over — before advancing. This “slant” is something that must be taken in stride in order to come to grips with the card’s overall impact.
Reversal thus becomes an explanatory footnote to the main text that expands upon its subtler implications, offering hints of a skewed trajectory that may not have been apparent when making the first cut. In Monty Python space, we could interpret the upright version as receiving the Argument Clinic’s “being-hit-on-the-head lessons” and the reversed mode as being pummeled with the Spanish Inquisition’s “soft cushions;” the goal is the same — jumping a hurdle despite initial misapprehension — but the means are different. The Tarot de Marseille Tower card is a perfect example of what I’m talking about (and one that I’ve used before in a similar context):
In the upright image, we have a rendition of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme: “Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.” This card is typically interpreted as “impending disaster” after which we must pick up the pieces and rebuild (although in all my years of reading I haven’t seen much of that from it). I prefer Alejandro Jodorowsky’s observation that it represents a sudden realization or epiphany, a “bolt from the blue” that disabuses the plummeting couple (the Devil’s former slaves) of their illusions while also liberating them from what he renames “the Devil’s House.” But they’re still going to hit the ground hard despite trying to break their fall.
The reversed version has always made me think that the people are “floating in space” and maybe parachuting down to make a “soft landing” (I don’t see them drifting back inside; gravity will still win out). In other words, its harsh message will be less urgent when it is reversed. I’ve seen others interpret this occurrence as “dodging a bullet,” but my own experience has been that the predicted event will still happen in some form although its force will be substantially diminished. (I once had the Tower appear in three consecutive daily draws with different decks, each time delivering a minor upset.) The erstwhile victims have it under control, so the ongoing destruction of the tower becomes an impersonal event going on in the background. Although it is still being worried by lightning, the broken top has fallen past them and is no longer a threat.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 28, 2024.
