Reversed Fours: A Stumble and A “One-Point Landing”
AUTHORS NOTE: Having finished re-reading 54 Devils, Cory Hutcheson’s playing-card divination book, and not yet possessed of a new tarot book, I picked up my interrupted reassessment of Paul Fenton-Smith’s Tarot Master Class (which I believe has now been renamed). In it he mentions that the 4 of Wands reversed can indicate a “lack of commitment,” which nudged me into considering all of the reversed Fours in that light.
In occult number theory, Four can be considered an expression of commitment in that it represents a four-square dedication to upholding the status quo in the matter at hand (it also has connotations of “law-and-order”), while in solid geometry it symbolizes the three-dimensional cube and is at its most grounded or rooted in the element of Earth. The essence of Four is stability, which in the presence of excessive inertia can become entrenched to the point of stagnation. It takes a lot to knock the props out from under its composure and send it into denial of its inherent nature. Fenton-Smith’s opinion is that, when upside-down in a spread, a card shifts the reading into reverse, redirecting its unfulfilled momentum back into the previous upright card of the suit for a “check-and-adjust” before it can advance any further.
For example, the reversed 4 of Wands may be unable to “buy into” the action plan set in motion by the 3 of Wands (which received its inspiration from the 2 of Wands), so the initiative must be sent “back to the drawing board” to be rehashed. This is a curious notion that I’m not entirely sure I agree with, but it’s worth considering as a working model. However, I’m not going to delve deeply into it here and will just mention it in passing. Although I’ve included it in my growing inventory of reversed-card meanings, I seldom remember to refer to it in practice.
But I have an even stranger idea. The feline species is (perhaps unjustifiably) renowned for always executing a perfect “four-point-landing” after a fall, unerringly finding its feet with exquisite grace and poise. Suppose that, when receiving a reversed Four in a reading, we face the risk of experiencing a stumble that deposits us squarely and painfully on the top of our head in an unexpected “one-point landing” (I’m envisioning the downward-pointing apex of the inverted pentagram that Aleister Crowley and Freida Harris often employed in their adverse “pip” card designs). Just when we thought things could not be going any better, the bottom falls out and we wind up unprepared when confronting the stern Five of the suit. This doesn’t necessarily convey the biblical proverb that “pride goeth before a fall,” it may just signify poor situational awareness or failure to fully apply ourselves to the purpose we’ve set before us.
With the 4 of Wands reversed, our best efforts could be squandered when we fail to recognize that there is little or no support for our objective. We may have gone “out on a limb without a safety net” and, unless we’re hard-headed enough to tough it out, we should brace for impact. It reminds me of the old nursery rhyme in which “Jill fell down and broke her crown.”
When querents receive the reversed 4 of Cups I may ask what it is about their current relationship status that is challenging their sense of emotional well-being. It suggests being plunged head-first into quicksand.
The reversed 4 of Swords can indicate a frustrating “one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out” feeling of ambivalence about a decision to be made. Poor choices may abound in the situation and the resulting case of “analysis paralysis” might derail prompt closure.
Confronting the 4 of Pentacles reversed, there may be a loss of traction that impedes material progress; think of the “dying cockroach” metaphor in which all four legs are waving futilely in the air. The platitude about “throwing good money after bad” in an attempt to “buy our way” out of a tight spot could also apply.
If we’re being philosophical about it, we might contemplate the reversed Four as a perversion of the physicist’s binary “Law of the Conservation of Mass and Energy” in that the seeker’s motivation leaks out and bleeds away. There is an undeniable “Humpty-Dumpty” quality to it. About the best that can be made of the dilemma is the concept of “breaking eggs to make omelets,” which peaks in the disruptive Five and persists until resolved in the restorative Six. Applying this analogy in contrast to Fenton-Smith’s model, the reversed Four prefigures the Five by propagating the incipient (and inevitable) “crack in the shell” of the quaternary stronghold that only gets worse before circumstances begin to improve.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.org on April 13, 2025.
