Upside down Tarot

Tarot readers have written plenty about what each card means when it lands upright, but Joan Bunning argues that reversed cards deserve far more attention. A card that appears upside down can carry a meaning quite different from its upright one. Reversals are often misread. Many readers treat a reversed card as bad news, or assume it must mean the exact opposite of the upright card. Others skip reversals altogether and simply turn the card the right way up.

Upside Down Tarot is a compact desktop reference for readers who already know the basics and want to widen their practice by including reversed cards. Bunning's approach rests on the idea of energies and their cycles. Change is the one constant in life, so a reading shows forces that are fluid rather than fixed. In her view, a reading needs to capture that movement to reflect reality.

The book shows how reversals can make a reading more dynamic, turning a still set of images into a moving picture of time's flow. It discusses the energy cycles of reversed cards and how to work with them, and it offers interpretation suggestions for all seventy-eight cards when they appear reversed.