Reversed Cards in the Marseille Tarot: Should You Read Them, and How?

Whether a card that comes out upside down should be read differently is one of the most common questions in tarot, and readers genuinely disagree on the answer. In the Marseille tradition, many practitioners read every card upright; others read reversals as an energy that is blocked or turned inward; a minority still use the old cartomancy convention where a reversed card means the opposite.

What matters most is choosing one convention before you draw and sticking to it, whichever school it comes from. This article explains where reversals come from, the three main ways of reading them, how to get past the fear they often trigger, and the alternatives that many Marseille readers prefer: reading the position, the neighbouring cards and the direction of the figures’ gazes.

What exactly is a reversed card?

A card is called reversed (or “inverted”, or “upside down”) when it appears head down as you turn it over. That only happens if the deck has been shuffled in a way that lets cards rotate, typically by spreading them on a table and mixing them by hand. If you always straighten your cards, or shuffle overhand while keeping the whole deck facing the same way, every card comes out upright and the question simply disappears.

The Marseille Tarot lends itself to the idea, because its cards are asymmetrical. Almost every figure has a clear orientation: Le Bateleur (the Juggler) stands behind his table, L’Empereur (the Emperor) sits on his throne, Le Pendu (the Hanged Man) hangs by one foot, Le Mat (the Fool) walks forward with his bundle. Turned upside down, these images look obviously “wrong”, which is exactly why the question feels so pressing.

Note one curiosity: Le Pendu is already upside down when he is upright. Reversed, he is standing on his feet. That alone shows how fully the meaning of a reversal depends on the convention you choose, the reader’s own agreement with the cards.

Where reversals come from, and the debate

The Marseille-pattern decks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as those of Jean Noblet, Jean Dodal or Nicolas Conver, were made for playing tarot, a trick-taking card game. In a card game, only the rank and suit of a card count. The idea of giving reversed cards a separate meaning belongs to the history of cartomancy, which developed in France from the late eighteenth century. Etteilla, the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, published methods for reading tarot cards in the 1780s and gave upright and reversed meanings; later manuals and twentieth-century schools spread the practice widely.

So reversals sit between two eras: younger than the old Marseille decks, older than modern tarot books. They are one layer that has been added to the cards over the past two centuries. That is why the debate is still alive:

• Readers who set aside reversals argue that each card already contains its light and its shadow, and that the context of the reading tells you which side is showing.
• Readers who use reversals argue that they add nuance, especially in small spreads where there are few cards to provide context.
• Readers who use the opposite-meaning convention see it as the classic method, simple and binary.

Each camp is right on its own terms, because these are reading conventions, like the choice of positions in a spread: agreements you make with the cards before you draw. What you can do is choose the one that serves your way of reading.

Three ways to read reversed cards

1. Read every card upright

Many Marseille readers turn every card the right way up. Their argument: La Maison Dieu (the Tower) can describe a liberating break or a painful shock, and the reading itself tells you which. The question, the position and the surrounding cards carry that information.

• Strength: simpler, cleaner, and particularly good when you are learning.
• Limit: you need to read the relationships between cards carefully to recover the nuances.

2. Read them as blocked or inward energy

This is the most widespread approach today. The card keeps its core meaning, but that meaning struggles to express itself: it is held back, delayed, turned inward, or sometimes overdone.

Card	Upright (general idea)	Reversed (“blocked” reading)
Le Bateleur (the Juggler)	starting, daring, having your tools to hand	hesitating to begin, scattering your resources
L’Hermite (the Hermit)	stepping back, searching alone	isolating out of fear, refusing help
Le Soleil (the Sun)	clarity, shared joy	a joy that struggles to show, a lack of recognition
La Force (Strength)	gentle mastery of yourself	forcing yourself, or being overwhelmed
L’Impératrice (the Empress)	creativity, expression, fertility of ideas	ideas that stay stuck, difficulty speaking up

• Strength: adds nuance while the card keeps its identity.
• Limit: stay vigilant, or every reversed card starts to sound negative.

3. Read them as the opposite meaning

This is the convention of classic fortune-telling manuals: success becomes failure, union becomes separation, a gift becomes a loss.

• Strength: easy to apply.
• Limit: it is the most fatalistic approach and, in our view, the least helpful for thinking. It turns roughly half of every reading into bad news, which says more about the method than about your situation.

On Tarot Universel we treat the tarot as a mirror that helps you think. In that approach a reversed card is at most a point of attention: an energy asking to be released, a place where you can act. That is why we recommend the “blocked energy” reading over the opposite-meaning convention.

Getting past the fear of reversals

For many people, seeing a card upside down triggers an immediate jolt: something is wrong. That reaction is understandable, because the image does look disturbed. It is also worth taking apart.

First, fear usually rests on an assumption: that reversed means bad. As you have just seen, that is one convention among three, and a minority one today.

Second, the cards that frighten people most when upright, such as Arcanum XIII, which bears only its number, or Le Diable (the Devil), remain just as workable when reversed. Under the “blocked energy” reading, a reversed Arcanum XIII might describe a change you are resisting, a transition that has stalled. That is uncomfortable, but it is also useful information: it tells you where things are stuck.

Third, a practical exercise helps. When a reversed card appears:

1. Turn it the right way up and look at the image for a moment.
2. Say what the card means in this position, for this question, as if it were upright.
3. Then ask: what could be getting in the way of this? What am I holding back?

This turns a jolt of anxiety into a question you can work with. If the anxiety lingers, put the reading aside and come back to it later. A reading is there to help you think and to steady you.

Alternatives: position, neighbours and gazes

If you decide to read every card upright, you keep all the nuance as long as you read the rest of the spread with care. Marseille readers have three main tools for nuance.

The position. A card in an “obstacle” position is already being read as what resists; the same card in an “advice” position is read as an invitation. La Force as an obstacle might point to a stubborn attempt to control everything; as advice, to patience and calm self-mastery. The position does the work a reversal would otherwise do.

The neighbouring cards. Cards modify one another. Le Soleil next to La Lune (the Moon) reads differently from Le Soleil next to Le Monde (the World). A card that sits between two difficult cards is coloured by them. Our guide to reading two-card combinations shows how to make cards talk to each other, and the pair pages list each combination of major arcana in both orders.

The gazes. Most Marseille figures look to the left or to the right. A figure turned towards the next card is “in dialogue” with it; one turned away from it suggests distance, avoidance or a different direction. Many readers find this observation richer than reversals, because it relies on what is actually drawn on the card, there for anyone to see.

These tools serve every reader, whatever their convention. Even if you do read reversals, position, neighbours and gazes remain the foundation of the reading; a reversal is at most an extra layer on top.

How to choose your convention

A few simple guidelines:

1. Decide before you draw. Reading reversals only when they suit the story distorts the reading.
2. Start with upright cards. For the first months, learn each card upright, with both its bright side and its shadow side. This alone gives you most of the nuance you need.
3. Add reversals later, if you feel something is missing, using the “blocked energy” reading, which serves you better than the opposite meaning.
4. Stay consistent within a spread. Every card follows the same rule.
5. Keep notes. If you try reversals for a few weeks, write down how they changed your readings. You will soon know whether they help you or simply add noise.

A worked example makes this concrete. Suppose you ask, “What would help me move forward with my training course?” and draw, in a three-card spread of situation, obstacle and advice: Le Bateleur, L’Hermite, then La Force. Read upright, the spread already says a lot: you have the tools and the desire to start (Le Bateleur), but you tend to retreat, study alone and hesitate to ask for help (L’Hermite as obstacle), and what helps is steady, calm, patient effort (La Force as advice). If L’Hermite had come out reversed and you use the “blocked” reading, it would underline the same point more sharply: isolation out of fear. The reversal adds emphasis; the story stays the same.

In the end, every method is valid on its own terms. Reading every card upright is as legitimate as reading with reversals. What counts is coherence, and a convention you have chosen calmly, well ahead of the reading itself. To put this into practice, look up each card’s meaning in the 78 Marseille Tarot card guides, or do a reading on the question that is on your mind.