Reversed cards: read them or skip them?
Not traditional, not required, and a decision you should make before you deal rather than after.
4 min read · Published 17 August 2026
The short answer
Both are legitimate. Reversals are not part of the older tarot tradition — historic decks often had no fixed orientation and early readers largely ignored it — and plenty of experienced readers work upright-only. If you do read reversals, pick one interpretive approach and stay with it: blocked energy, the opposite meaning, an internal rather than external expression, or simply a weaker version of the upright card. What matters most is deciding before you shuffle.
Reversals are a recent convention
Early tarot decks were playing cards, and many had non-directional back designs and symmetrical art, which makes orientation meaningless by construction. Reading a card differently because it landed upside down is a later refinement, popularised alongside the nineteenth and twentieth-century occult revival.
That does not make it wrong. It does mean anyone claiming reversals are the traditional or correct way to read is mistaken about the history, which is covered in the history of tarot.
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 or delayed and internalised are the two most useful in practice, because they keep the card's own meaning intact rather than replacing it. The strict opposite reading is the most popular and the least helpful — it effectively doubles the deck to 156 cards, most of which are just negations, and it makes readings pessimistic in a way that has nothing to do with the question.
The honest case for skipping them
- 78 cards is already a lot. Reversals take a beginner from 78 meanings to 156 before they are fluent in the first 78. This is the single most common reason people abandon tarot.
- Context already does the work. A joyful card in an obstacle position, or surrounded by difficult cards, is already reading as complicated. You do not need orientation to get nuance.
- They arrive by accident. Whether a card is reversed depends on how you shuffled, and many people shuffle in a way that produces reversals at nothing like an even rate. If you never riffle or rotate, you may see almost none.
- Plenty of professionals do not use them. Upright-only is a completely standard way to read and not a shortcut.
How to decide
Pick before you shuffle, and write down which convention you use in your reading notes. Switching mid-reading — or deciding a card is 'not really reversed' because you dislike the result — is the failure mode this whole choice is exposed to.
A reasonable path: read upright-only until the 78 cards feel familiar, then add reversals as *blocked or delayed* and see whether it adds anything for you. If it does not, drop them again. Nothing is lost.
What this has to do with honesty generally
The reason to fix your convention in advance is the same reason to fix your spread positions in advance, and the same reason a birth chart should state its house system. A system you can adjust after seeing the result will always confirm you.
AsterNym's tarot has no orientation at all, because it does not draw — your birth card is calculated from your date, so there is nothing to reverse. That sidesteps the question rather than answering it, which we would rather say plainly.
Common questions
- Are reversed tarot cards traditional?
- No. Early tarot decks were playing cards, often with symmetrical art and non-directional backs that make orientation meaningless. Reading reversals is a later convention popularised during the nineteenth and twentieth-century occult revival.
- How should I read a reversed card?
- Pick one approach and keep it: blocked or delayed, the opposite meaning, an internalised version, or a weakened version. Blocked and internalised are generally more useful because they preserve the card's own meaning rather than replacing it with a negation.
- Is it okay to read tarot without reversals?
- Yes, and many professional readers do. Position and surrounding cards already provide nuance, and 78 upright meanings is enough to learn first. Adding reversals doubles the interpretive load before fluency.
- Why do I never get reversed cards?
- Probably your shuffle. Overhand and riffle shuffling without rotating a portion of the deck preserves orientation, so cards stay largely upright. If you intend to read reversals you need to deliberately rotate part of the deck.