The location path language XPath is of particular importance for XML applications since it is a core component of many XML processing standards such as XSLT or XQuery. In this paper, based on axis symmetry of XPath, equivalences of XPath 1.0 location paths involving reverse axes, such as ancestor and preceding, are established. These equivalences are used as rewriting rules in an algorithm for transforming location paths with reverse axes into equivalent reverse-axis-free ones. Location paths without reverse axes, as generated by the presented rewriting algorithm, enable ecient SAX-like streamed data processing of XPath.