The HANGED ONE: Reversal as Revelation
Tarot Magic in Pisces Season
If you’ve ever wondered how to read reversals (how to interpret cards when they are drawn upside down), the HANGED MAN is your teacher.
Most of us come to the Tarot seeking clarity, understanding, a cure for our own myopic vision. We want to see MORE. We’re searching for cracks in the walls of our pre-patterned logic where the light can still come in. The HANGED MAN1 promises just that kind of opening. A doorway to heightened awareness. The potential for divine revelation.
Gimme, right? But—
One look at this card and you know that the revelation is not going to come in easy.
Guy is HANGING upside down. You don’t have to know that his one-legged suspension alludes to medieval carceral punishment (for traitors mostly) to understand that this energy might be uncomfortable.
Like the Norse God Odin, who willingly hung himself from Yggdrasil (the World Tree) for 9 days, thereby gaining the wisdom to read the sacred runes, the HANGED ONE suffers for the gift of Sight.
Runes, like tarot cards, are symbols that transfer visions from the spirit world to the material realm. With them you can see beyond the veil into the imaginal realm of possibility; their symbols of sound and meaning are encoded with the mystical capacity of language to transcend space and time. As the does the ancient Hávamál, when it tells how Odin sings of receiving the runes:
Do you know how to write? Do you know how to read?
Do you know how to tint? Do you know how to try?
Do you know how to ask? Do you know how to offer?
Do you know how to send? Do you know how to slaughter?2
To receive, Odin’s song suggests, you must be willing to sacrifice.
That said, if you get this card in a reading—it doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to suffer bodily harm or mental anguish. It’s your routine take on things, not you yourself, that’s on the chopping block.
Familiar, upright ways of seeing are no longer relevant.
Remember how I said that it was mostly TRAITORS who were hanged in this manner (by one foot, inverted) in medieval Europe? To embody the HANGED MAN can mean turning your back on social norm, thwarting sanctioned allegiances, going your own backward way. If you’re thinking that this sounds pretty badass, you’re not alone. Who doesn’t love a rebel?
But being in HANGED MAN energy is less about standing firm in your unorthodox beliefs and more about being open to the possibility that you could be wrong. You have to be willing to REVERSE your own stance. To say openly that you don’t know. You sacrifice the need to be right. (Not-so-coincidentally this is a great energy to bring to your deck.)
Like James Dean, the HANGED MAN swings “without a cause” because the cause itself would be too restricting. To stand/suspend oneself in the name of the Unknown is to adopt the posture of ultimate Freedom.
To access the deep magic of the HANGED MAN you need not “walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”3 Instead, you have to be willing to suspend your belief in the way things ‘are,’ ‘have been,’ or are ‘supposed’ to be.
Admit that you don’t have the full picture.
Only when we relax our ego’s need to know and surrender to the broader scope of divine knowledge, can we receive the wisdom that waits for us beyond the status quo.
Life itself suspends us in the UNKNOWN.
The gift of the HANGED MAN is that when we accept the imperfection of our knowledge, we are blessed with an expanded field of possibility. Our subconscious suddenly feels free to float us new ideas in our dreams. The activated imagination builds a bridge to our intuition.
As under the light of the MOON, we are gifted with visions.
From this new perspective we can read the the Runes. We can decipher Truth from Tarot. We can hear the voice of our divine inner knowing. Like the HANGED ONE, we are crowned with the orb of sacred insight.
Where we are humble, HANGED MAN says, we are holy.
The Dance in Divine Opposition
As with so many of Tarot archetypes, the HANGED ONE asks us to dance the fine line between two opposing energies. On the one hand there is an assertion of the will here—apparent in modern decks that depict the HANGED MAN as yogi or aerial acrobat, speaking to the disciplined, muscular intent of this energy.
On the other hand, the HANGED ONE demonstrates surrender, humility, sacrifice; sometimes alluding to the crucifixion with marks of stigmata on the HANGED ONE’s hands.
Pulling the HANGED MAN, we might ask which opposing pole would bring us closer to our Truth—are we being asked to surrender the pull of our Ego? Or take a stand? Where might the two find balance? Determining either or may not be as significant as the acknowledgment that both energies are necessary for the process of transformation. And to my mind, that’s often what the HANGED ONE represents—deep, integrative transformation.
Our Piscean Companion
Collectively, we are always in the midst of profound transformation. “Being in the middle of a crisis is something chronic to humanity,” Walter Benjamin said.4 And here we are—things seem to be reaching a kind of tipping point on the Human Stage (yet again). Maybe, like me, you’ve been struck recently with the stirring need to act coupled with a growing despair over geo-political and local environments where it no longer feels comfortable or even safe to do so.
Fellow astro nerds may attribute this to slow-moving Neptune, which began its 14-year stay in upstart Aries on January 25; while Mars (Aries’s ruling planet) will be in Pisces (Neptune’s “home” sign) March 2-April 9.
Warrior Mars can have a hard time with Neptune’s HANGED MAN humility. (HANGED MAN corresponds to the planet Neptune in the hermetic teachings of the Golden Dawn.)
Together Mars and Neptune ask us to put our spiritual lives into action. We will, with Maren Morris, have to navigate what it means to stand up for ourselves and not “cast a shadow.” It’s a constant shift in calibration, learning to lift up what needs lifting without pushing others down.
But the possibilities for personal and cultural evolution are immense in this moment. With the HANGED MAN to guide us, creative solutions may be divined from the deep wells of our imaginations. Unseen futures may take shape in the Piscean swirl of our collective visions for peace.
But first we must traverse the tension of the REVERSAL—the undoing of what we thought we knew.
So let’s talk about Reversals…
There are lots of thoughts and theories about Reversals and many of them are understandably confusing. A Reversal, like the HANGED MAN, can operate like a mini-undoing of what we think we know about a situation or the card we pull to represent it.
For my practice, it’s helpful to think of Reversals as HANGED MAN+ It’s not that the card in question now represents its opposite, but that some new insight or perspective will be brought to bear upon it.5 Preconceived notions may need to be unraveled before the energy of the card can come through. Patience is likely required. The revelation can’t be forced and may take some time to crystalize before the meaning becomes apparent. But the HANGED MAN affirms that the discomfort in not knowing how to read the situation will be worth it. On the other side of the Reversal, we step into new ways of embodying our Truth, of bringing our essence into the material world. We can adopt the HANGED ONE’s steadfast gaze into the unknown and, in that sense, remain upright even when the world is turned on its head.
Try This:
Pull a card on each of the following questions to see how the HANGED ONE is showing up for you this Pisces Season:
What am I learning to see anew?
What might I need to give up in order to see clearly?
What new visions are eager to flow to me?
One more thing: Did you know that Maren Morris worked with an artist to create a deck of divination cards accompanying each song on her album Humble Quest (2022)? Apparently Morris and her crew regularly pull tarot cards to focus their energy before performances, and the cards are a reflection of Maren’s encouragement to lead her listeners on Humble Quests of their own.
How could you use Tarot to help you transition in and out of important moments in your day? Week? Year?
It seems a practice that the HANGED ONE would recommend.
Arcana Craft offers in-person monthly Tarot Circle Sessions at the Healing Temple! Please join us on March 23, 7-9pm for our exploration of the SUN.
Check out my event page, our MeetUp page, or message me with your questions.
Sometimes I refer to the HANGED MAN as the HANGED ONE—a modern title that I like for its gender neutrality.
This line from Mary Oliver’s incredible “Wild Geese,” which I wrote about at length during last year’s ode to Pisces and the MOON.
From The Arcades Project. See full quote in the Emperor: Who’s in Charge Here?
For instance, if I pull the Fool (our card from last month) reversed, I consider its upright meaning (exploration, naive confidence, wonder) with a dash of HANGED MAN on the side. Now the Fool’s penchant for novelty might mean that I’m experiencing dissonance around my natural proclivity toward adventure. I might feel myself being called toward new experiences, but find myself blocked by inner or outer obstacles. Maybe the methods I once employed to activate my Fool energy (taking a class, or going on a trip) aren’t available to me and a new (upside down) approach may be necessary. Instead of leaving town, I make the effort to see my usual surroundings differently. The Reversal suggests both that FOOL energy wants to be available to me and that I will likely be learning to access it in new ways that shift my perspective (HANGED MAN) in a much wider sense.