The Hanged Man
Song Pairing
“Teardrop” by Massive Attack. Haunting and suspended in time, this song floats in the same eerie liminal space as The Hanged Man. It’s all tension and surrender, a quiet unraveling beneath the surface. You’re still, but not safe. You're hanging — and something is about to shift.
Astrology
Ruled by Neptune and aligned with Pisces, The Hanged Man shares this sign’s gift for surrender, spiritual depth, and emotional nuance. Like Pisces, this card drifts into stillness not to escape, but to feel everything more fully. It’s about seeing through illusion and learning to float, even when you don’t know where the current is taking you.
Historic Interest
In Norse mythology, Odin hanged himself from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, for nine nights to gain hidden knowledge. Pierced by a spear and suspended between realms, he discovered the runes: symbols of magic, language, and fate. This myth mirrors The Hanged Man’s deeper symbolism: wisdom born of suffering and surrender.
In the Golden Dawn tradition, this card is titled "The Spirit of the Mighty Waters", linking it to emotional depths, subconscious currents, and the transformative stillness of water. Together, these references frame the card as an initiatory passage between worlds.
The Hanged Man tarot card represents surrender, stillness, and seeing things from a new perspective. It marks a suspension or pause in your journey that invites deep reflection, discomfort, and eventual transformation.
Vibe
Suspended in transformation
Affirmation
“I’m learning to love the version of me that’s still in progress.”
Card Pairing
Justice → The Hanged Man → Death –
More than a pair, I love this full, three-card arc of awakening. You face the truth (Justice), pause to integrate it (The Hanged Man), and then release what no longer serves you (Death). It’s a transformation trilogy.
Kindred Spirit
The Moon is The Hanged Man’s shadow twin, equally lost in the fog of intuition and illusion. Both exist in liminal spaces where logic dissolves and transformation brews. Together, they’re tarot’s ultimate emo pair: hanging out in the dark, feeling everything, and trusting that the truth will reveal itself in time.
Esoteric Connection
Knot magic and binding rituals symbolize intentional restraint. In these practices, cords and knots hold emotion, desire, or pain until you’re ready to release them. Like The Hanged Man, they transform stillness into power—and ask: what are you tying yourself to, and are you ready to let it go?
Bonus Micro-Ritual: Find a short piece of string, yarn, or ribbon. As you hold it, name one thing that feels like it’s keeping you suspended: an old role, a fear, a decision you haven’t made.
Now slowly tie three knots into the string. With each knot, breathe into the feeling of being held, not trapped. When you’re done, hang the thread somewhere visible as a reminder that surrender can be sacred, and that you’re allowed to stay in the pause without getting stuck.
Untie it when you’re ready to move on.
Element
The Hanged Man is associated with the element Water, but not in a flowing, emotional, or romantic sense like Cups. This is Water in its stillest form. Deep, unmoving, reflective. Like a well you can’t see the bottom of. Water here symbolizes the quiet pull of intuition, the surrender of ego, and the slow emotional processing that only happens when everything else stops. It’s the element of spiritual immersion and inner recalibration.
Misconception
Readers sometimes treat The Hanged Man as a peaceful or enlightened pause, but it’s not always voluntary or serene. The card can signal discomfort, disorientation, or even emotional paralysis. Surrender doesn’t always feel graceful: it can come with grief, shame, or ego death. Don’t over-romanticize the stillness; it often arrives when everything else has fallen apart.
Full Interpretation
“There’s something surreal and bizarre about the whole scene, especially since the man isn’t suspended from his neck.”
Surrender, Stillness, and the Power of Letting Go
The Hanged Man marks a strange and jarring moment on the Fool’s journey. After the forward momentum of the Chariot, the fiery conviction of Strength, and the moral clarity of Justice, everything suddenly stops. There’s no more striving, no more control. Everything is suspended. The Fool finds herself caught midair, hanging between who she was and who she’s about to become.
And it’s not exactly comfortable. This moment doesn’t arrive with peace or clarity. It often feels awkward and disorienting, like someone yanked the emergency brake and left you dangling in the in-between.
A note on my illustration
In my deck, the Fool is a woman. So when she arrives at this card, she isn’t seeing herself reflected back. She’s looking at a man, suspended and restrained, caught in an unfamiliar moment of surrender. This is a contrast I wanted to explore.
Throughout the deck, I’ve played with gender. Many of my figures are reimagined outside traditional roles. But a few archetypes remain distinctly male: the Kings, the Emperor, and the Hanged Man. Not to elevate them, but to preserve something specific about how these figures have historically functioned. The Hanged Man, in particular, represents someone shaped by systems of control, authority, and performance — the kind of cultural pressure that still clings tightly to masculinity.
Some modern decks have renamed this card “The Hanged One” to reflect a more inclusive, less gendered reading. I respect that choice. But I chose to keep the original title and image, not as a fixed statement, but in homage to Pamela Colman Smith’s iconic deck. The design of the title text of each card in my deck is pulled directly from her illustrations.
I like thinking of this guy as a middle manager in some nameless corporate system. Someone who was taught to lead and provide, and who now finds himself powerless. Just hanging there.
The Hanged Man belongs to anyone who has ever felt held in place by expectations they didn’t consciously choose. The image might be gendered, but the experience is universal.
My Interpretation: A Modern Kind of Crucifixion
When I created this version of The Hanged Man, I didn’t want to show a glowing figure with spiritual serenity. I imagined a man who might have been on his way to work and found himself now dangling from a rope with no explanation. It’s like an awakening of existential dread.
Echoing the structure of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, he’s suspended from a rough, T-shaped wooden branch and his free leg bends into the shape of a number “4”. (I think it’s cool how this position is reflected in the dancer’s position in The World.) His arms are behind his back, reinforcing a sense of restraint, but I stripped away the man’s halo and other religious symbolism. He’s not a saint or a mystic…he’s just some guy caught in a moment he didn’t choose.
What’s important to me here is his necktie. For years, the red “power tie” has been a symbol of ambition, masculinity, and corporate dominance. It’s a costume accessory worn by a certain breed of man taught to lead, win, and never stop hustling. A tie is also sometimes referred to as a noose. Here, it’s dangling…limp and impotent. It’s a result of the silent pressure of performance, responsibility, and cultural expectations. It’s a symbol of the things that bind us such as work, identity, image, and duty, and how those things can strangle us. This shift is the heart of this card.
He’s held in place by two kinds of ropes. One binds him physically by the ankle, stopping his forward movement. The other wraps around his identity: a social tether, knotted by years of duty, image, and expectation. The actual rope suspends his body. The tie suspends his role. Together, they hold him between who he was and what he might become.
This isn’t a peaceful pause. It’s the moment you stop pretending everything’s fine and start asking real questions. Who tied your noose? Why are you still hanging here? And what would happen if you let go?
The Shape of Surrender
There’s something surreal and bizarre about the whole scene, especially since the man isn’t suspended from his neck. Hanging upside down by one foot isn’t a method of punishment we recognize. It’s not logical or practical. The T-shaped beam is not a cross. Why is he suspended from only one foot? Why does he look so resigned to his predicament? Everything about the image suggests that we’ve stepped out of conventional space. The Hanged Man is a moment that doesn’t play by the rules. It doesn’t belong to progress or punishment. It just exists in stillness, but something is starting to shift.
This card invites you to pause and reconsider your direction. Not with urgency, but with openness. What if you stopped trying to move forward (or in all directions) and just stood still, even if the position is uncomfortable? What might you see from an angle you’ve never considered before?
Insight doesn’t always come through motion. Sometimes it comes when we’re forced to stay exactly where we are.
Voluntary... or Not?
The man’s intention is ambiguous. In some many versions of this card, he looks peaceful, like he chose this suspension as a form of meditation or spiritual discipline, but I’m not satisfied with that conclusion. Because sometimes we don’t choose the pause. Sometimes we get hung up by burnout, heartbreak, confusion, or a total loss of momentum. Life pulls the rug out, and suddenly we’re left hanging. Not forever, but long enough to feel the discomfort of being out of control.
This card often shows up when you're being asked to stop pushing. To quit solving and to sit with something you don’t fully understand yet. That can feel passive, but it’s not. Something is coming undone in a way that allows new meaning to take root. This isn’t about surrendering to failure, it’s about transformation and surrendering to the truth, even when you don’t like what it reveals.
The power of this card lies in its ambiguity. Sometimes surrender is a conscious act, while other times it’s the only option left. Either way, transformation begins the moment you stop resisting what is.
The Transformation Beneath the Stillness
The Hanged Man looks like he’s just casually hanging around (lol). But something is happening just beneath the surface: a quiet unraveling. In the Fool’s journey, this card comes right after Justice. She’s already faced her reflection in the mirror. She’s weighed what belongs to her and what she’s been carrying for someone else. But knowing the truth isn’t the same as becoming it. This is where that process begins.
In The Hanged Man, there’s no more movement on the journey. Just the long, silent pause after a realization about an aspect of your life where you want to cling to everything old, but you’ve outgrown it. You can’t rush this part or reason your way out of it.
The quiet warning here is that something in you may be preparing to die. This hanging is not a punishment or a threat, just a subtle pulling away from everything that used to define you. It’s not surprising that Death is coming next. And the only way to meet it is to surrender what (and who) you think you are.
When The Hanged Man appears…
Love & Relationships: This card often speaks to emotional limbo. A relationship may be stalled, undefined, or stretching into situationship territory: all chemistry, no clarity. You might be hanging on to the possibility of something deeper, or caught in a push-pull dynamic that keeps the tension alive but never resolves.
Sometimes we stay in the in-between because the slow burn is intoxicating.The way desire feels sharper when it’s just out of reach. But The Hanged Man asks what it’s costing you to keep hanging there. What are you sacrificing for the thrill of almost?
Career & Work: If you’re feeling overworked, uninspired, or stuck in a job that doesn’t reflect your values, this card might be calling that out. Think about the necktie in my image as a signal. You may need to take a step back from your usual efforts and examine what you’re sacrificing for success, and whether it’s worth it.
Spirituality & Growth: The Hanged Man is a spiritual pause. An in-between space where insight comes slowly and only after surrender. You’re being invited to see your own life from a new perspective, but you can’t force it. Let the discomfort be part of the process.
Family & Emotional Life: This card often appears when you’re carrying too much emotional labor in your relationships. You might be the one keeping things stable, fixing problems, or holding space for others. The Hanged Man asks what would happen if you stopped and allowed others to step into their own responsibility.
Closing Thought
The Hanged Man reminds us that transformation doesn’t always begin with movement. Sometimes it begins in suspension. It can be an awkward and uncomfortable feeling where nothing makes sense and nothing moves. It’s possible to stop long enough to see the world and ourselves from an entirely different angle…even upside down.
“The quiet warning here is that something in you may be preparing to die.”
Reversed Interpretation
Stuckness, Stagnation, and False Surrender
When you flip The Hanged Man upside down, something weird happens: he looks upright. Head above feet, spine aligned, almost like he’s standing. His red necktie becomes phallic now pointing straight upward, almost like he’s displaying power. But he’s not. He’s still bound by one ankle, still suspended, still unable to move. That’s the trick of this reversal: it can create the illusion of progress or clarity, while keeping you just as stuck as before.
This version of the card often appears when your “pause for clarity” has gone on too long. You might be saying you’re being patient, that you’re reflecting or waiting for a sign. But under the surface, there’s avoidance, fear, or emotional paralysis. You’re not suspended anymore, you’re frozen.
There’s also a warning here about performative surrender. Have you started to cling to your “pause” as an identity? Are you hanging in there just to prove that you’re “working on yourself” or are you just keeping yourself safe from the risk of change?
And here’s the hardest part: in the reversed image, you might look like you’ve got it together. You might seem upright, but the rope’s still there. The tie’s still around your neck. And the freedom you crave won’t come from appearances. It only comes when you stop pretending you’re fine and actually let something go.
This reversal doesn’t demand movement. It demands honesty. Where are you still hanging, even if you swear you’re not?
Pause and Reflect
Are you staying in limbo because it hurts less than knowing the answer? That relationship, that job, that version of yourself? What are you keeping on life support just to avoid grief?
Take Action
Take a selfie, just as you are right now. One shot. No smiling, no retakes, no filters. Then rotate the image upside down. Now look at it. Really look. Let the upside-down you speak what the right-side-up you keeps quiet.
Ask yourself:
• What truth does this version of me see that I’ve been too scared to face?
• What am I performing and who am I performing it for?
• If I stopped pretending I’m fine, what confession or craving might rise up?
Ready to go deeper?
• What’s the one desire I carry that feels too shameful to say out loud?
• Who do I secretly wish would witness my suffering, just to finally understand what they did to me?
• Who am I drawn to, even though I know I shouldn’t be?
And finally:
• If this upside-down selfie could speak... what raw, messy truth would it post without asking permission?