Who was responsible for the concept of reading reversals?

I know there's lots of debate about reading reversals, and whether or not they are necessary. It occurred to me that in reading PKT and some of the other classics, I don't recall any mention of reversals?

In the beginning I tried my best not to mess the deck up ... but i've since come to appreciate the subtle nuances that reversals can give (that you might not get in the upright meaning of another card with a similar meaning).

But i'm not trying to start a debate on whether or not to use them. That's a really personal choice. I am just really curious to find out if anyone knows who first conceived the idea, and then formulated the reversed meanings for each card?

In other words, is reading tarot reversals something that can be traced backwards historically?

Thanks in advance.

Even though The Key to the Tarot (1909/1910) does not specifically discuss reversals, it gives distinct divinatory meanings for normal and reversed cards. I don't know about anything before that.

The first cartomancy playing cards book 1770 and tarot 1785 I believe

The 1770, revised 1773 book coining the term cartomancy has upright, reversed and even side notations on a playing card deck known as piquet, with 32 playing cards. The cards are doublesided.....Etteilla is said to have first written about reading cards in detail with instructions by Decker, Dummett and Depaulis in A Wicked Pack of Cards. I have seen
models or illustrations of doublesided playing cards in the 1770 text.

The circa 1784 tarot cards with upright and reversed meanings by Etteilla and his followers also had upright and reversed meanings. The reprint and historical samples of text for French cartomancy that I have seen from 19th century French publishers had upight and reversed meanings..

Waite's reprinted and translated information from Julia Orsini, Etteilla, etc seems to echo both upright and reversed meanings.

But if this is not something you want to include in your readings, history matters less than your comfort with such practises.

Hope that helps.

Thank You!

Thank you Jason & Cerulean! Greatly appreciated.

I looked up the book on amazon, and have added it to my future reading list. It sounds like it would answer a lot of my questions, so Thanks again!

I'd just like to add that i think it's always problematic trying to identify 'who' originated something when it's something so intuitive... there may be someone who first wrote down a system of reversals, but that doesn't mean it actually originates with them. It's a bit like trying to ask 'who' originated an archetype. I think if you submit yourself to reading the symbols, it's a part of that process (whether or not individuals choose to do it) to read the symbols when they fall in an inverted form. It also goes back to much earlier forms of divination where the position of the sticks/entrails/birds/whatever has as much divinatory significance as anything else. Reading the cards that 'jump' out of the pack is a similar thing. Hope that is somewhat useful to the discussion and not a red herring

I agree

Thanks for your input Wulzcat.

I should have worded the question differently. I'm mainly interested in finding out the history of the concept not really the who, but rather the when.

As Jason mentioned 1909/1910 seemed like the first mention of it, and I was wondering if it was documented somewhere else, and if it was a GD concept originally or had much older roots.

But the book Cerulean mentioned might have many of the basic answers to questions I had floating around in my head.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer. Appreciated!

Thank you for the question, I've wondered too.