Reversed Tarot Cards: How Rider-Waite, Thoth, Marseille & Wild Unknown Handle Them Differently

BY NICOLE LAU

"Should I read reversed tarot cards?" is one of the most frequently debated questions in tarot communities—and one of the most genuinely contested. Unlike many tarot debates, this one doesn't have a single correct answer. Different traditions handle reversals differently, different practitioners have developed different methodologies, and the right approach depends on your reading style, your tradition, and your specific practice goals.

This guide covers how each of the four major tarot traditions approaches reversals—and gives you the information you need to make an informed decision for your own practice.

What Are Reversed Tarot Cards?

A reversed (or "inverted") tarot card is one that appears upside-down when drawn from the deck. Whether this happens depends on how you shuffle: some shuffling methods naturally produce reversals; others don't. Practitioners who read reversals deliberately shuffle in ways that allow cards to reverse; those who don't read reversals shuffle in ways that keep all cards upright.

The question of whether reversed cards carry different meanings than upright cards—and if so, what those meanings are—is where the traditions diverge significantly.

Rider-Waite-Smith: The Reversal-Friendly Tradition

The Rider-Waite-Smith tradition is the most reversal-friendly of the four major systems. Waite's companion text The Pictorial Key to the Tarot includes reversed meanings for every card, establishing reversals as a standard part of RWS reading from the beginning.

Common RWS Reversal Approaches

Blocked or internalized energy: The most common approach. A reversed card suggests that the card's energy is blocked, suppressed, or turned inward rather than expressed outwardly. The reversed Three of Cups (upright: celebration, community, joy) might suggest blocked joy, difficulty connecting with others, or celebration that feels hollow.

Shadow expression: The reversed card expresses the shadow or negative aspect of the archetype. The reversed Strength (upright: inner courage, compassion) might suggest cowardice, cruelty, or the abuse of power.

Delayed or emerging energy: The card's energy is coming but hasn't fully arrived yet. The reversed Ace of Pentacles might suggest material opportunity that is approaching but not yet available.

The card's energy in process: The situation is in transition—the card's energy is neither fully expressed nor fully blocked, but in movement. This approach is particularly useful for cards that represent processes rather than states.

No reversals: Many experienced RWS readers choose not to read reversals at all, finding that the upright cards provide sufficient nuance when read with attention to context, position, and surrounding cards. This is a completely valid approach within the RWS tradition.

Thoth Tarot: Dignities Over Reversals

The Thoth tradition takes a fundamentally different approach to the question of reversed cards. In the Thoth system, the primary method for understanding how a card's energy is modified by context is elemental dignities—not reversals.

Crowley himself did not emphasize reversed card reading in The Book of Thoth. The elemental dignity system provides a more sophisticated and precise method for understanding how cards modify each other's meanings: rather than a binary upright/reversed distinction, elemental dignities create a spectrum of strengthening, weakening, and neutral relationships between cards based on their elemental attributions.

Most serious Thoth practitioners do not read reversals. They read elemental dignities instead. The result is a more nuanced, relational reading methodology that doesn't require the binary upright/reversed distinction.

Some Thoth practitioners do read reversals as an additional layer of information, but this is not standard practice within the tradition.

Tarot de Marseille: Orientation as Information

The Marseille tradition has a more complex relationship with reversals than either RWS or Thoth. Because the Marseille Major Arcana cards feature figures with clear directionality—they face left or right, their gestures point in specific directions—the orientation of these cards carries meaning even without a formal reversal system.

The Jodorowsky Approach

Alejandro Jodorowsky, the most influential contemporary Marseille practitioner, reads card orientation as significant but does not use a traditional reversal system. Instead, he reads the direction figures face as indicating the direction of energy flow in a spread: a figure facing left looks toward the past; a figure facing right looks toward the future. A reversed card (upside-down) in the Jodorowsky method suggests energy that is "underground"—not absent, but not yet surfaced.

Traditional Cartomantic Reversals

The historical French cartomantic tradition did use reversed card meanings, assigning specific predictive meanings to reversed cards that differed from their upright meanings. This approach is less common among contemporary Marseille practitioners but remains part of the tradition's historical record.

Wild Unknown: Intuition Over System

The Wild Unknown Tarot, consistent with its overall approach of prioritizing intuitive response over systematic methodology, does not have a formal reversal system. Kim Krans's guidebook does not include reversed meanings.

Wild Unknown practitioners who want to read reversals typically develop their own approach based on intuitive response: what does this card feel like when it appears upside-down? Does the animal imagery communicate something different when inverted? This intuitive approach to reversals is consistent with the deck's overall somatic, feeling-based reading methodology.

Many Wild Unknown practitioners choose not to read reversals at all, finding that the deck's nature-based imagery provides sufficient nuance in upright readings.

Should You Read Reversals? A Decision Framework

Given the diversity of approaches across traditions, how do you decide whether to read reversals in your own practice? Consider these factors:

Your Primary Tradition

If you work primarily with RWS, reversals are a natural part of the tradition and worth exploring. If you work primarily with Thoth, elemental dignities provide a more sophisticated alternative. If you work with Marseille or Wild Unknown, reversals are optional and largely a matter of personal preference.

Your Reading Style

If you are an analytical reader who values systematic methodology, reversals add a useful layer of nuance. If you are an intuitive reader who finds reversals disruptive to your flow, omitting them is completely valid.

Your Experience Level

Beginners often benefit from starting without reversals—learning the upright meanings of 78 cards is sufficient challenge without adding reversed meanings. Once you have genuine fluency with upright cards, adding reversals is a natural next step if you choose to.

The Reading Context

Some practitioners read reversals in personal readings but not in readings for others, or vice versa. Some use reversals for certain types of questions (shadow work, psychological exploration) but not others (practical divination). Flexibility is a virtue.

Building a Nuanced Reading Practice

Whether or not you choose to read reversals, the most important factor in reading nuance is consistent daily practice and systematic documentation of your readings. The 30-Day Tarot Practice Workbook provides a structured framework for this kind of consistent practice—and its daily pull structure works equally well with or without reversals.

For practitioners interested in exploring shadow work through tarot—which is one of the primary applications of reversed card reading—21 Shadow Work Tarot Spreads provides a comprehensive framework for this kind of deep inner work. The spreads are designed to access shadow material directly, without requiring reversed cards, through carefully designed positional questions.

The practice of tarot journaling is especially valuable for practitioners experimenting with reversal systems—recording which approach feels most accurate, tracking how reversed interpretations play out in actual life situations, and developing a personal reversal methodology based on evidence rather than theory. The High Priestess Tarot Journal provides a dedicated space for this systematic experimentation and documentation.

The Bottom Line on Reversals

There is no single correct approach to reversed tarot cards. The Rider-Waite tradition supports them; the Thoth tradition largely replaces them with elemental dignities; the Marseille tradition uses orientation rather than reversal; the Wild Unknown tradition leaves the question open to intuition.

The right approach for your practice is the one that produces the most accurate, nuanced, and useful readings for you. Experiment with different methods. Track the results. Trust your experience over received doctrine. That is, ultimately, the tarot practitioner's most reliable guide. For deepening this personal work, the Tarot Journaling Prompts offers 100 questions to refine your inner dialogue, the 30-Day Tarot Practice Workbook builds the daily discipline that reveals your true reading rhythm, the 52-Week Tarot Journey carries that practice across a full cycle of seasonal and lunar shifts, the Shadow Work Tarot guides the precise excavation reversals often point toward, and the Jung and the Archetype study grounds all this experimentation in the archetypal language that makes tarot a true bridge to the unconscious.