Reversed cards: read them or skip them?
Not traditional, not required, and a decision to make before you shuffle.
2 min read · Published 17 August 2026
First, the answer
Both are legitimate. Reversals are not part of the older tradition: historic decks often had no fixed orientation and early readers ignored it. Plenty of experienced readers work upright-only. If you do read reversals, pick one approach and stay with it: blocked energy, the opposite meaning, an inward expression, or a weaker version of the upright card. Decide before you shuffle.
Reversals are a recent convention
Early tarot decks were playing cards, often with symmetrical art and non-directional backs. Orientation meant nothing by construction. Reading a card differently because it landed upside down came with the nineteenth-century occult revival, covered in the history of tarot.
That does not make it wrong. It does make anyone calling reversals the traditional way to read wrong about the history.
Four ways to read a reversal
| Approach | The Sun reversed would be… |
|---|---|
| Blocked or delayed | Success that has not arrived yet, or is being obstructed |
| Opposite meaning | Gloom, failure, absence of clarity |
| Internalised | Joy present but private, felt rather than shown |
| Weakened | A muted, less certain version of the upright card |
Blocked and internalised keep the card's own meaning intact. The strict opposite reading doubles the deck to 156 cards, most of them negations, and makes readings gloomy for no reason connected to the question.
I read upright only. The deck loses nothing. Reversals are a hundred-year-old habit, not a law.
The fair case for skipping them
- 78 cards is already a lot. Reversals take a beginner to 156 meanings before they know the first 78.
- Context already does the work. A joyful card in an obstacle position is already complicated.
- They arrive by accident. If you never rotate part of the deck, you may see almost none.
How to decide
Pick before you shuffle and write the convention in your notes. Deciding a card is 'not really reversed' because you dislike the result is the failure mode this choice invites, and it is the same reason a birth chart should state its house system.
AsterNym's tarot has no orientation, because it does not draw. Your birth card is calculated from your date, so there is nothing to reverse.
Natalie Hasselbank