The Hanged Man Tarot Card Meaning

The Hanged Man upright meaning

Wikipedia says the card shows a man hanging upside down by one ankle, and names a single exception: the Tarocco Siciliano, which hangs him by the neck. The same article adds that his expression traditionally suggests he is there "by his own accord". The calm face suggests a choice, and the halo reads as insight: Wikipedia calls it "a higher learning or an enlightenment".

Waite's divinatory list runs from "Wisdom, circumspection, discernment" to "divination, prophecy", with "trials, sacrifice" in the middle. Nothing in it says waiting. That reading comes from the picture and from later writers. Biddy Tarot gives the keywords "Pause, surrender, letting go, new perspectives", and Tarot.com calls the card "doing nothing on purpose".

Biddy Tarot adds that the pauses can be "voluntary or involuntary", and that if you miss the signs, life may impose one. That comes closest to Book T, which puts the same idea in harsher words: "not voluntary".

The Hanged Man reversed: stalling or pointless sacrifice?

A reversed Hanged Man pulls two ways. Biddy Tarot says you know you need to "hit the pause button" but resist it, and fill your days with tasks. Labyrinthos reads a stretch of sacrifice with "getting nothing in return".

Waite's reversed words are stranger: "Selfishness, the crowd, body politic." He gives no gloss. One reading is a pause refused, someone who will give nothing up and follows the crowd instead, but that is our guess and Waite does not say it.

Sort the readings with one question: is the stall yours? Zenithalign lists "Pointless sacrifice, stalling, martyrdom, or stubborn resistance to necessary change." Tarot.com asks, "Are you giving up too much for someone or something that's not giving back?" If so, the sacrifice may be one that is not paying you back.

Is The Hanged Man a yes or no card?

Does a card about waiting give a straight verdict? Three sites give three answers. For Tarot.com the verdict is NO, followed by "Sit still and observe." Zenithalign scores the upright card "Conditional Yes" and the reversed card No. TarotAtlas calls the meaning "patience, acceptance, and waiting" and expects most upright draws to be a yes.

We read upright as not yet. Ask whether to send the message or sign the lease today, and the card says hold off and look from another side. Reversed is no: the delay has stopped being useful.

Book T and Waite split here too. Book T's "loss" and "suffering" push toward no, Waite's "Wisdom" toward yes. Treat our answer as a tone.

The Hanged Man in love: relationship, single, feelings, waiting

In a relationship

Tarot.com says a relationship under this card may be "in limbo" or in need of space for a new perspective, and advises you to "see the dynamic differently before making a move". The Tarot Guide is blunter: if you are unhappy, you are "the only one keeping yourself in this situation", and you can walk away if you want to.

Single

If you are single, Labyrinthos gives the keywords "love can't be rushed, avoid romantic pressure". Tarot.com points instead at an old pattern and asks whether you are "still stuck in a loop disguised as love". Our reading: stop pushing for a while and look at the pattern.

The Hanged Man as feelings

Drawn for someone's feelings, the card describes a person who is taking their time. Labyrinthos reads a person in "a deep sense of contemplation and surrender", who looks at things from several angles before deciding. Reversed, the same site gives "frustration and impatience": the person feels stuck and starts to question the connection.

Waiting on someone

How long should you wait? The card gives no number, and Waite's list has no relationship words at all. Biddy Tarot's reversed reading supplies a limit: you can be content to wait "to a point", and you know a time will come when you "must decide". We put it as a test. Waiting with an end date is the upright card, and waiting with none is the reversed one.

The Hanged Man as work and money

The Hanged Man is the card of projects on hold. Tarot.com lists "projects on hold, job decisions pending, or a season of waiting". It fits a hiring freeze, a client who has not signed off, or a plan waiting for budget. On money, Labyrinthos reads it as a change in how you look at the problem: "a pause can actually bring you a new way of looking at things".

Reversed, Labyrinthos reads sacrifices at work that have not paid off, such as retraining or family time given to a project, and also "stalling for time". A pending decision fits the card, and a decision you keep avoiding fits its reversal.

The Hanged Man as advice and as a person

Your offer on a house is in, the seller has not answered, and you check your email every ten minutes. That is the Hanged Man as a problem you live in. Tarot.com's advice is "Take the pause." Spend an afternoon on something unrelated to the offer, and give the pause a day it ends.

Zenithalign names the archetype "The Willing Martyr / The Suspended Mystic". The word martyr is the part Waite disliked, as we show below.

Symbolism of the Rider–Waite–Smith card

• The gallows. Waite says it forms "a Tau cross" and that the tree of sacrifice is "living wood, with leaves thereon". Labyrinthos reads it as the living world tree.
• The face. Waite says the face "expresses deep entrancement, not suffering". Biddy Tarot calls the expression calm and serene.
• The halo. Waite calls it "a nimbus about the head". Biddy Tarot reads it as new insight, awareness and enlightenment.
• The bound foot. Biddy Tarot says his right foot is tied to the tree and his left is free, bent behind the right leg. Waite says this position forms a fylfot cross.
• The arms. His hands are held behind his back. Biddy Tarot and Labyrinthos both say the arms form an inverted triangle.
• The clothes. Red pants and a blue top. Biddy Tarot reads the red as passion and the physical body, and the blue as knowledge.

Is the Hanged Man a martyr? Book T and Waite disagree

Wikipedia says the image is a pittura infamante, an Italian type of picture showing a man hanged upside down, and that the card "is meant to represent self-sacrifice more so than it does corporal punishment or criminality". Waite pushed the same way. In Part II he writes that the card has been "called falsely a card of martyrdom", and says that its published interpretations find "only vanity". His own sentence is short: it expresses "the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe".

The Golden Dawn's manuscript sees a different card. Book T gives it "Enforced sacrifice, punishment, loss, fatal and not voluntary, suffering." Waite, describing the picture, says the figure suggests "life and not death". Most of the sites we read lean on Waite's side, calm and chosen (Tarot.com says the figure "isn't in distress"), and put the harder reading mainly in the reversed card, though Biddy Tarot allows an involuntary pause upright too. We found no source that explains the gap between the two, so we only note it.

The Hanged Man and Water: the card's element

Attributions from Book T (Golden Dawn, c. 1892; printed 1912).

Book T files this card under an element instead of a sign: Water. Its Hebrew letter is Mem, and Book T titles it "The Spirit of the Mighty Waters". After The Fool (Air), this is the second of the four trumps Book T ties to an element; Judgment (Spirit and Fire) and The Universe (Earth and Saturn) follow. Zenithalign lists Neptune; Book T has no planet here, only Water.

Water covers Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, and each sign holds three cards. That gives the Hanged Man the Two through Ten of Cups, from Love to Perfected Success. The run is not all sweet. The Five is Loss in Pleasure and the Eight is Abandoned Success, both closer to Book T's "loss" than to Waite's calm picture.

The 9 minor arcana cards of the water signs

Book T gives each water sign three numbered cards, one per ten degrees; all of them are Cups.

Today 2 of the ten planets are in water signs: Sun in Scorpio, Mercury in Scorpio.

With no sign to look up, the thing to check is how much water your chart holds. Only 4.1% of the dates we tested had no planet in a water sign, the lowest share of the four elements, and the average date had 2.46 of ten planets in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces. The tool below counts yours.

Questions about The Hanged Man

Next to The Hanged Man

In the Major Arcana: Justice (11) ← The Hanged Man (12) → Death (13).

All 22 cards with their signs and planets: tarot card meanings.

Water on this site: water signs · the four elements · Cancer zodiac sign · Scorpio zodiac sign · Pisces zodiac sign · your full birth chart.

Written by The Zodiac Atlas editorial team with the help of AI and edited by a person. Quotations are from Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot and the Golden Dawn's Book T, both in the public domain; the card picture is a 1910 printing of Pamela Colman Smith's drawing for the 1909 deck. Sign dates and planet positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris (tropical zodiac). Tarot and astrology are symbolic traditions; they do not predict events.