Tarot card meanings · Major Arcana 12
What does The Hanged Man mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Hanged Man upright means “Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy”, and reversed “Selfishness, the crowd, body politic”.
Upright
Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Selfishness, the crowd, body politic.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
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.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 2
Where does the Hanged Man fall in a reading?
The Hanged Man belongs to the Major Arcana. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.
Ask one question. Draw three cards, and cast an I Ching hexagram beside them to see where East and West agree. Free.
Draw three cardsWaite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.