The Hanged Man
The Hanged Man represents a crisis of suspension in which old habits and viewpoints lose their significance, leaving one exposed, helpless, or stuck. Insight and new perspective may come through surrender, patience, and letting go rather than through action or control. The card often requires sacrifice, endurance, and acceptance of humiliation to move through the crisis. It warns against reacting with pride or wrath and suggests adopting a sin-eater/sacrifice archetype to bear the necessary letting-go.
Keywords
XII – The Hanged Man
Correspondences
Water
Keywords
The dying god, the sin-eater, the sacrifice, acceptance of fate, release, being caught in a blind alley, complete exposure and helplessness, loss of control, passivity, waiting, a releasing crisis, being stuck, letting go, disregard for one’s own well-being
Meaning
The Hanged Man is an uncomfortable card, but one that has to teach much. We are typically in a crisis where we realize that our old habits and viewpoints have lost their significance, old safeguards have become meaningless, we feel helpless as our world is turned on its head and we lose traction with the ground, but insight may come when we surrender, give up control and wait with patience. We may have to bide our time and make sacrifices to endure this card.
Exploring the Card
There is too much of an iconographic overlap for Snape’s worst memory not to make the image for this card, even though it emphasizes all that is uncomfortable and unhappy about this card, and less of the positive aspects that can be found in it as well.
Exploring the Card — Lesson
Still Snape teaches us a valuable lesson as the subject of this card. If we fight it (by lashing out and calling a good friend a mudblood, for example) we're only making it worse. This card can only be effectively dealt with by accepting a certain amount of humiliation and loss of control and bearing it with patience. The Sin-eater or the Sacrifice are better archetypes to tap into when we are in Hanged Man mode, than Pride and Wrath.
Visual Description
A robed man hangs upside down by one ankle at the center of the image, his hair falling toward the ground and his face calm. Two other figures stand below him, looking up; one wears glasses and both are dressed in similar cloaks. Flowing decorative ribbons or tendrils weave across the scene and partly obscure the figures, while a distant landscape with hills and water appears in the background. The Roman numeral "XII" is visible at the top and the title "The Hanged Man" appears at the bottom.
Harry Potter tarot
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