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The Hanged Man

Major arcana · XII

On the card

A figure hangs serenely by one ankle from a living T-shaped tree, the free leg crossed behind, a halo of light around the head.

Upright

Suspension
New angle
Surrender

He is not struggling, and the halo suggests the pause is the point. Traditionally a card of waiting on purpose, and of what becomes visible only from an inconvenient position.

Reversed

Stalling
Pointless sacrifice
Stuck

Read reversed, the pause has outlived its use — time given up for nothing in particular, or a sacrifice nobody asked for and nothing came of.

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About this deck

The artwork is the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith to Arthur Edward Waite's direction and first published in 1909. It has passed into the public domain, which is why it can be shown here in full — but it is her work, and the reason this deck became the one nearly every other deck answers to.

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