Spirit Bear Dreaming Tarot

I just want to “confess” to one of my Tarot peculiarities: I haven't used a reversed card for over twenty years and have no plans to do otherwise. I guess I'm not really confessing, because I don't hide it, but it might seem strange to some and I wanted to put it out there as an option for people who are developing or changing their own relationship with Tarot.

My own relationship with tarot evolved quite a bit over time. I feel like my spiritual adulthood began when I had my first tarot reading, which allowed my buried self to emerge and throw off the darkness that had oppressed me for years. That reader didn't use reversals, but I didn't know such a thing existed until I bought my own deck and encountered them in the little white book. I thought the idea was odd, but adopted it as it seemed the way things were done.

I was mostly a terrible card reader for the first few years, my readings were sporadic and vague. It took me years to educate myself enough to know what the card images were on about. In addition, I was initiated with an Etteilla deck and only later realized how unusual that deck is. And back then you had to buy books or find them at the library. The big local public library had three tarot books, one a picture book, one was by old French occultists, and the other only talked about some of the cards.

That era was saturated with material about Eastern spiritual traditions and hardly anything else. A wise friend suggested that I study more broadly and I spent years studying and over time I learned more about Tarot and Tarot became more common.

Eventually I was good enough to stumble through a reading and get something good from it. But I had adopted a bunch of habits that I couldn't justify any longer. The first thing to go were the significators. Yes, there is something good in that idea, but it seems to me to be outweighed by the limits that are imposed. If I use the Queen of Wands as a significator, then that removes that card from appearing and adding to the story. I stopped doing that and my readings got better.

Second, I just stopped using the Celtic Cross for every reading. I'll do one every few years for fun, but I could never work out why that was being taught. It is complex and multi-layered and full of disjointed leaps of meaning to my way of thinking. I don't see why we burden people who are learning with complexity. I've adopted a few layouts that were taught to me and developed many layouts for specific situations. Simpler layouts with fewer cards let the Tarot speak more plainly, I think, and that is what most people want most of the time.

And third, and this is the point that I'm finally getting to, I just stopped doing reversals. I was doing a reading one day and I was just pissed off about the reversed cards muddying the reading, so I turned them all upright. Then I stopped putting down any reversals. Then I went through all of my decks and turned all the cards the same way and developed ways of mixing and shuffling them so that reversals rarely appeared. My readings went from being full of good details and some muddiness, to being mostly clear as a bell. Not always, but mostly very clear.

So my practice is to never put down a reversed card. Maybe once every few years I'll let it stand as a quirk, but I've never looked back. As I ponder why this works for me, it seems there are a couple of reasons. First, it just adds a special mode to card meanings that may or may not make sense. I often see people using negative words for reversals, and I'm not sure that's useful. The Tarot is already full of challenging cards, and some combinations can be a real slap in the face. I find plenty of room in upright cards for all of the complexity of life and don't need to double the meanings to do a good reading.

Next, I continuously wonder at the state of the deck. To me the best readings come when the deck is utterly unknowable. As my perception changes and evolves I find myself wanting to make the deck as chaotic and as unknowable as possible when I am about to draw from it. What percent of cards are reversed in there? How do you know you didn't turn them all upside down? How do I “reset” the deck? Do I have to swirl the cards around before I put them back in the deck, or maybe mix up the whole deck? If all of the “worst” reversals are primed to go then what? Would I be better off with 156 cards where half are reversals, that way I can get both meanings? For me, just let that all go. Read them all upright. Do I need more permutations on the existing richness of a full deck?

And the last thing is that I see reversals as turning nearly every card into another version of The Hanged Man. I find that a bit depressing to contemplate. Reading with only one of them is challenge enough.

Now I want to emphasize that I'm not saying you are wrong for using reversals, I'm saying it is not useful for me. My point here is for people developing their storytelling voice with Tarot. There are lots of traditions and habits, but you can test them all. Find what works best for you, what gives the best readings. If it isn't working, but it aside and do something simpler. Keep a journal and look through it to see what works best for you. For me, that meant no reversals, among other things.

Thanks for reading!

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