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This article is about the tarot card. For the TV series, The Hanged Man (TV series).

 

The Hanged Man (XII)

The Hanged Man (XII) is a Major Arcana Tarot card. It is also known as The Traitor, particularly in older decks.

[edit] Description and symbolism

A. E. Waite was a key figure in the developement of modern Tarot interpretations.^[1] Not all interpretations follow his theology, however, and personal experience and standards play a role in every attempt at divination. It is also viewed as the tarot card specifically for the day April 12th; each day of the year has its own card, and your birth date and its tarot card should ultimately describe you.

Some frequent keywords are:

• Sacrifice ----- Letting go ----- Surrendering ----- Passivity

• Suspension ----- Acceptance ----- Renounce ----- Patience

• New point of view ----- Contemplation ----- Inner harmony

• Conformism ----- Nonaction ----- Waiting ----- Giving up

The gallows from which the Hanged Man is suspended forms a Tau cross, while his legs form a fylfot cross; there is a nimbus about his head. The tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon, and the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering. The figure suggests life overturned and in suspension, but not death.

A common interpretation of this card is that the man appears to be an outcast to society (he is upside down) but has inner harmony (his body is in complete alignment). However, the Hanged Man's inverted state can lead to destruction in later cards (such as Death or The Tower). Receiving the hanged man can be a warning about excessive independence at the expense of a person's own well-being.

[edit] Interpretation

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The Hanged Man is a card of profound but veiled significance. Its symbolism points to divinity, linking it to the death of Christ in Christianity and the stories of Osiris (Egyptian mythology) and Mithras (Roman mythology). In all of these stories, the destruction of self brings life to humanity; on the card, these are symbolized respectively by the hanged man and the living tree from which he swings. Its relationship to the other cards usually involves personal loss for a greater gain.

The Hanged Man is often associated with Odin, the primary god of the Norse Pantheon. Odin hung upside down from the world-tree, Yggdrasil, for nine days in order to gain knowledge of the runes, which the Norse cosmology regarded as the source and end of all mystery and all knowledge. The moment he glimpsed the runes, he died, but the knowledge of them was so powerful that he immediately returned to life. This interpretation highlights the necessity of undertaking acts of personal sacrifice in order to achieve one's own higher spiritual good.

Another meaning resides in the journey of life. Certain aspects of life — for example sex — are viewed one way by children and a different way by adults. The Hanged Man is the initiate into mysteries. He understands the truth because he sees it from a different angle.

The most common interpretation of the card is of an outcast of society that appears to be a fool but is actually in complete alignment. The upside-downness of the hanged man gives him an advantage that outsiders are unable to see or understand.

[edit] Mythopoetic approach

 

Le Pendu from the Tarot of Marseilles

He is closely associated through his cross sum (the sum of the digits) with The Empress, which in many mythologies is his mother or wife. He is the Dying God who dies each year, whose rebirth renews the world. Ideally, he is a willing sacrifice, though life sometimes demands sacrifices of the unwilling.

He is also associated with The Knights of the minor arcana; all these heroes are willing to die for their mission.

His cross sum makes him a solar hero. There are 12 months in a solar year (as opposed to 13 months in the lunar year). In some way he represents the solar cults who rode down and vanquished the old goddess cults (metaphorically or otherwise), though some accommodations were reached.

When Key 21 (The World) is placed above The Hanged Man, it makes an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life, another association with The Empress. He represents the deal life made with death; that in return for reproduction, we are mortal. This is illustrated by the death of Osiris; even though Isis brings him back again and again, in the end, she has to be satisfied with leaving him in the underworld and using her arts to conceive a child with him. Their child, Horus, is a sun god, and in some sense, Osiris reborn.

The Hanged Man is every hero committed enough to the adventure to die for it.

The Hanged Man's association with the Empress can be ennobling or pathological. If the Empress is the object of desire, the Hanged Man is the one who desires. That desire can be destructively consuming or defining. If the Hanged Man appears with the Empress, it can signal consuming longing.

When he appears in a throw, he often signals a past sacrifice (of the Querent or otherwise) whose energy is either still enriching the Querent's life or being misspent. He can also represent a sacrifice the Querent is being set up to make. That can be a good thing (initiating the Querant into the mysteries, saving the world) or not so much (duping the Querent into an unwise sacrifice). He may also signal something about the person's relationship with their partner or parent.

[edit] Trivia

• His leg position is the same - though upside down - to that of The Emperor (from Tarot de Marseille, forming the number 4 or Jupiter sign)
• Odin hung from a tree to gain enlightenment.
• Saint Peter was crucified upside-down.
• A boss character from The House of the Dead is named after this Tarot card.
• In the X/1999 Tarot version made by CLAMP, The Hanged Man is Subaru Sumeragi
• The Jeffery Deaver book, "The Twelfth Card", includes a character who leaves the card "The Hanged Man" at the crime scene.
• Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play Tarot card games such as French Tarot and Austrian Königrufen. In English-speaking and Spanish- speaking countries, where the games are largely unknown, Tarot cards came to be utilized primarily for divinatory purposes.
• American psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp used The Hanged Man as a title to one of his books, sub-titled Psychotherapy and the Forces of Darkness (ISBN 0-8314-0036-6) as a metaphor for a stage in life felt to be comprised primarily of stagnation and despair and rebirth into a renewed life.
• British novelist Lindsay Clarke used The Hanged Man as a chapter title in his novel The Chymical Wedding: A Romance (ISBN 0-330-30968-4). The Chymical Wedding won the Whitbred award for best novel in 1989. John Fowles wrote 'The best reason to read The Chymical Wedding is ... it offers us: keen insights into human characters and a vital rendering of the perilous bliss and darkest imaginings of our fragile world.'
• In 1945 Mussolini was hanged upside down after is death in Piazzale Loreto, Milano.