“The Boomerang Effect” — Reversal as Denial
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was reading Isabel Kliegman’s description of the reversed 9 of Cups as indicating “denial of the need for self-care” (my words paraphrasing hers) in an alcohol-addiction scenario where the client was obviously lying to herself. Smelling another opportunity to enhance my growing appreciation for reversed-card significance, I decided to look through my catalogue of proposed meanings for the phenomenon of reversal to see if “denial” is one I already touched on, since it’s perfectly reasonable that I would have done so in my characteristically thorough (OK, anal) manner. I found it buried in the general “Avoidance” category without further discussion and thought it would be worthwhile to expound upon.
“Avoidance,” as in literally “looking the other way;” “head in the sand;” a “Hanged Man moment,” sacrificing time and initiative; procrastination; “sitting on one’s hands;” denial; “blame-shifting;” passive-aggressive resistance.
In my experience, reversal creates a separation or disconnect between our subjective view of a card’s message and what it is really trying to tell us. Successfully integrating this discrepancy into the narrative requires building a “bridge of understanding” between the initial impression and the likely consequences of acting on mistaken assumptions. When the card is upright we (as the typical querent) can see its portent clearly and deal with it without second-guessing, but when it is upside-down we may misconstrue, push back against or deliberately ignore its advice, as if we want to stick it in a box on the back shelf in the darkest corner of the basement and forget we ever bumped into it. This can point out what we are willfully not seeing about the matter, and create a substantial risk of being blind-sided by circumstances. Those of a certain age will remember the insipid cartoon face of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman and his “What, me worry?” gap-toothed grin.
In this particular context (as well as many others) I characterize the impact of reversal as a “slippery customer.” Outright rejection requires a firm adversary against which to pit ourselves in making a stand; here we execute more of a sideways lean as we suppose that the “arrow of Fate” goes whizzing by our head. But just when we think we’ve dodged a bullet, we learn to our dismay that it was a boomerang. (Hmm, there’s one to add to my inventory: the “boomerang effect.”) A reversed card might be considered a “red flag” that a situation we’re in danger of mishandling could very well come back to haunt us. As with the 9 of Cups, the nature of the card will shed light on what that could be.
Denial is a form of tacit acknowledgement that we don’t intend to deal with our issues, instead fobbing them off on some usually lame excuse that won’t hold water if challenged. Reversal implies that if we don’t de-fang them now, these troubles will most likely come back to bite us later, predictably in a sensitive spot where we’ve let our guard down. It’s like the ludicrous Cold-War-era “duck-and-cover” directive that was given to school children, to be performed upon hearing the siren signaling a nuclear attack; we called it “put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.” With a reversed card, the querent’s head may already be “where the Sun don’t shine” and the reader’s task is to help extricate it in the most decisive way. If there are many reversals, it becomes a real possibility that they may be completely “at sea” regarding the matter: off-the-page; out-to-lunch; up-the-creek; missing the boat and any number of other dire pronouncements of abject existential malaise that the reader must approach with consummate sensitivity. As the wonderfully witchy Margaret Hamilton sneered in The Wizard of Oz, “These things must be done delicately!”
When I encounter a reversed card in a spread, I will first briefly go over its upright meaning to set the stage for what’s to come. Depending on how central it is to development of the matter, I will ask the querent whether there is anything about the the card’s less-obvious implications that he or she could have missed entirely or may have dismissed out-of-hand. (If its focus is on the past, I will ask only whether there is unfinished business that is still lingering in an impactful way.) After I get a fix on its potential for being misunderstood or discounted by the querent, we will spend some time talking about why that might not be a good idea.
As a bonus, here is a link to my complete library of the general ( not card-by-card) consequences of reversal. It’s essentially a “brain dump” of every wrinkle I could think of, loosely categorized by the leading entry in each group.
https://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/the-significance-of-reversed-cards/
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on May 3, 2023.
