Tarot · The Major Arcana
The Hanged Man
- Pause
- new perspective
- surrender
The picture
A man hangs upside down by one foot from a living wooden beam, his other leg bent behind him, his hands behind his back and a halo around his head.
The meaning
The Hanged Man hangs still and looks serene. The tradition reads him as a pause, a chosen standstill, and a view from an entirely different angle. He stands for the insight that comes once you stop pushing. Waite stresses that the card has nothing to do with punishment.
Reversed
Reversed, he is read as waiting for no purpose, or clinging to a situation you could long since have changed.
In love
In love he is read as a time of waiting and the willingness to take the other person's view.
At work
At work he stands for a pause in a project that leads to a better solution.
As your card of the day
Not everything has to move forward today. A day of waiting can give you a new way of seeing.
The Hanged Man sees the world upside down and sees something new. Look at an old question from the other side today.
The Major Arcana are the 22 trump cards, from the Fool at zero to the World at twenty-one. The tradition reads them as stations on a life's journey: large themes that touch everyone at some point.
Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909, public domain (Wikimedia Commons).