MAJOR ARCANA · TRUMP XII
The Hanged Man
Tarot card meaning
UPRIGHT
Surrender, pause, a new perspective, sacrifice.
REVERSED
Stalling, needless sacrifice, indecision.
The card
A man hangs upside down by one foot from a living tree, legs crossed, hands behind his back, his head surrounded by a halo. He looks serene.
The Hanged Man is trump XII of the twenty-two trumps of the Major Arcana.
In the Golden Dawn's attributions it carries the Hebrew letter Mem (מ), “water”, and the element of Water. On the Tree of Life it is path 23, joining Geburah and Hod.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: The Hanged Man, XII.
In Waite's words
Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck that Pamela Colman Smith drew, and explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). His text, with his spelling:
DIVINATORY MEANINGS Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.
REVERSED Selfishness, the crowd, body politic.
The picture and its symbolism
The gallows from which he is suspended forms a Tau cross, while the figure—from the position of the legs—forms a fylfot cross. There is a nimbus about the head of the seeming martyr. It should be noted (1) that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; (2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death. It is a card of profound significance, but all the significance is veiled. One of his editors suggests that Éliphas Lévi did not know the meaning, which is unquestionable—nor did the editor himself. It has been called falsely a card of martyrdom, a card of prudence, a card of the Great Work, a card of duty; but we may exhaust all published interpretations and find only vanity. I will say very simply on my own part that it expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe.
He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Part II § 2 and Part III § 3. Public domain; text from the 1922 printing on Wikisource.
Related cards
In three historical decks
The same card as it was painted in fifteenth-century Milan, printed in the French pattern of the Tarot de Marseille, and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider–Waite–Smith deck.
In the Tarot de Marseille: Le Pendu, XII.
Learn more in the lessons
- The Twenty-Two Paths & the Tarot · 18 min
- The Major Arcana Journey · 18 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
Images: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain); the RWS1909 scans on Wikimedia Commons. Lequart, Paris, c. 1890 (public domain); scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), via Wikimedia Commons. Attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, mid-15th century (public domain); scans by David Madore, via Wikimedia Commons.