Upright

Upright describes a card that lands the right way up, with the picture facing the reader. Its upright meaning is the card's standard one, the meaning given first in every guidebook. The word matters only to readers who also use reversals; for them an upright card shows its quality flowing freely, where a reversed card may show it blocked or turned inward. Readers who do not use reversals simply turn any upside-down card the right way and read every card as upright. Some decks, such as many Marseille-pattern pips, are hard to tell upright from reversed. See reversed tarot cards.