12. The Hanged Man
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Welcome to Soulchology’s worksheets, your starter-kit into an intuitive self-enquiry using tarot and astrology. I write these in my usual dry humour, which reflects the tone of my sessions too, because learning is intense enough without stripping it of humanity. A little wit makes the wisdom easier to digest!
Anyway, while full sessions include numerology, Lenormand, and therapeutic layers, these worksheets are your solo starter kit designed to get you going without frying your nervous system.
Grab your deck, take a breath and don’t overthink it. No altar required. You can read these on your lap, mid-commute, or in bed with questionable lighting. If you know current transits, great, add them in. If not, the cards still work because they’re generous like that.
And, if you shuffle really fast, they love to fling out like you’re live in an episode of Ghosts and Trevor is standing next to you.
Each sheet prompts you to connect the cards with your real life, that is, not your aspirational, one-day-when-I-journal-daily life. Pay attention to the artwork, colours, symbols, and emotional tone because tarot is layered, not linear. Study only what leaps out, don’t go looking for clues.
This isn’t about mystical perfection, it’s about noticing yourself. Your thoughts, your choices, your patterns. If you’re new to tarot and feeling twitchy about it, you might want to read my piece on Substack that gently dismantles the pressure.
My advice is to pull (or fling) your card at the end of the day, not first thing. That way, you’re reflecting and not pre-loading your brain with vague forecasts. It’s a faster way to build intuitive confidence and a more honest way to learn what the cards actually mean to you.
i. The Nutshell
Upright
The Hanged Man is strategic surrender, and when this card appears, it’s calling for a perspective-shift in how you see something. You’re being asked to stop mid-stride because there’s something you’re missing when you barrel forward. Associated with Neptune, The Hanged Man lives at the intersection of insight and sacrifice. Neptune dissolves ego-bound vision so something truer can emerge. This card says: give up the angle that’s not working, the story that’s stuck, or the need to make sense of what isn’t ready to be solved. Wisdom lives in the pause.
Keywords: Surrender, pause, perspective, letting go, suspension, insight.
Translation: Stop forcing it - try seeing it differently instead.
Reversed
The Hanged Man reversed usually shows up when the pause has turned into a stall. What began as a purposeful pause has turned into the familiar habit of avoidance again. You might be calling it reflection, but it’s really indecision, fear or inertia. This card reversed is a kick that says, “you’ve waited long enough!”. Neptune’s shadow is foggy and can distort your sense of timing, keeping you circling the same inner monologue. It’s no longer surrender, this is Stuck with a capital S. The way out? Choose - because this shifts the disorientation.
Keywords: Stagnation, delay, resistance, confusion, overthinking.
Translation: Is this a holding pattern? At some point, not deciding is the decision.
ii. Illus-traits
A quick glance at The Hanged Man’s symbolic traits in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck - what's hidden in plain sight?
Halo Around Head – Enlightenment through surrender.
Inverted Position – Perspective flipped on purpose.
Tied Foot, Free Leg – Limited motion, chosen stillness.
Calm Face – Peace despite the predicament.
Tree Frame – Growth holds the pause. The suspension is fertile.
iii. Influences
Planetary:
The Hanged Man is ruled by Neptune, but not in a dreamy, wish-upon-a-star way. This is Neptune as a dissolver - it helps you see things in a new way by blurring the boundaries and surrendering the illusion of control. It strips down ego-led narratives to make space for something accuracy. You’re being invited to stop gripping so tightly to answers that haven’t arrived yet. Neptune asks: What could shift if you stopped trying to force meaning, and let it reveal itself in its own time?
Natal House(s):
The Hanged Man aligns with the Twelfth House of undoing, seclusion, surrender, and the unconscious. This is where the self goes silent so the soul can speak. It’s the pause before rebirth and the space where ego unravels just enough to let coherence in. The Sixth House sits opposite, prompting you that insight is useless unless it’s applied to daily life. Together, these houses ask: where do you need to retreat for truth to surface, and how will you integrate what you find?
Astrological Sign(s):
The Hanged Man doesn’t have a traditional sign ruler, but it’s widely associated with Pisces which is mutable water. Pisces brings deep receptivity, boundary-blurring empathy, and a tendency to drift unless anchored. In this card, Pisces energy becomes still. The invitation is to yield to a higher rhythm, even if it makes no logical sense. Virgo, the opposite sign, watches from across the axis, asking you to turn the insight you receive into something serviceable, grounded and real. Together, they ask: are you spacing out, or spacing in?
Numerologically:
The Hanged Man is Twelve, which reduces to Three - the number of synthesis, creation, scattered energy, optimism and gestation. Twelve is a transitional space: not quite here, not quite there, whilst being fully intentional about it. It asks you to suspend action in favour of reorientation because you’re in strategy-planning mode. Three reminds you this isn’t about waiting forever because it’s germinating; something is forming here and it needs stillness to shape itself. Can you allow the pause to produce definition whilst accepting the temporary discomfort?
Element: Water moves without force. It adapts and flows, mirroring its surroundings while maintaining its essence. It teaches us to be present in uncertainty and encourages us to feel rather than fix. The Hanged Man says this will be quicker if you relax your stance whilst remaining strong.
iv. A Day in the Life of The Hanged Man
Well That Escalated Quickly
You call it “patience,” but it’s really just avoiding action in a spiritual way. You’re hanging on, but not in the enlightening way; more like hoping someone else makes the hard call for you. You confuse stuckness with surrender and wonder why the answer never lands. You stall, overthink, and repeat. Every delay feels meant to be, but it’s usually just fear acting like it doesn’t care.
Adjusting the Knobs
You’ve hit pause, but you’re not quite sure what you’re listening for. You know something has to shift but can’t name it yet. You're suspended between knowing and acting, and you sense this discomfort has a purpose, but still bargain with it anyway. You journal, meditate, maybe over-symbolise, hoping insight arrives before you're forced to choose. You’re starting to see there’s a difference between pausing with intention and waiting to feel in control, and you know that one moves life forward, whilst the other keeps it on hold, but you just can’t quite embody this yet.
Unsubscribed from Self-Sabotage
You yield to the pause without trying to edit it. You embrace the in-between sensing this space holds more truth than the action you were ready to force. You’re open to reversal, willing to see something from another angle without needing it to match your previous plans. You’re now being more present.
Writing the TED Talk
You surrender with intention and make peace with the not-knowing whilst letting stillness do its work. You reframe stagnation as gestation and trust timing without demanding timelines. You let discomfort become insight and allow this perspective to do what willpower alone couldn’t. You know clarity isn’t always that light bulb moment and that it’s being with the quiet that shows the way.
v. Working with these Energies
Living The Hanged Man with Presence and Perspective
The Hanged Man asks you to stop pushing and start perceiving. This archetype trades motion for meaning. When progress stalls or certainty slips through your fingers, The Hanged Man doesn’t offer answers. It invites a new vantage point. Insight arrives by surrendering the illusion of control and works by effecting participatory stillness. The Hanged Man challenges you to trust the discomfort of pause, to stay curious in uncertainty, and to recognise that some shifts only come when you let go of your grip a particular outcome. Let The Hanged Man remind you: insight isn’t always found in momentum. Sometimes, it’s born from the brave decision to stop mid-climb, turn around, and see what you’ve missed on the way up.
1. Relinquish control to gain clarity
– Where are you pressing forward when life’s asking you to pause?
– What opens up when you stop needing to define the outcome?
– Are you waiting with presence, or avoiding discomfort?
2. Reframe resistance
– What if this pause is permission, not punishment?
– What belief is this delay challenging?
– Where have you mistaken surrender for weakness?
3. Let discomfort be a teacher
– What is this stuckness trying to show you?
– Where does patience feel like a threat to your identity?
– Can you listen longer without rushing to interpret?
4. Shift your perspective, not your plan
– What changes when you look at the situation upside down, literally or figuratively?
– Are you sticking with what you know instead of making a wise choice?
– What happens if nothing changes but the way you see it?
5. Honour the sacred pause
– What would it take to rest without apology?
– Where in your life needs reflection more than reaction?
– How can stillness become a choice, not just a circumstance?
vi. Building Skills
Wise Mind Meditation
The Hanged Man is the pause between knowing and acting; the still point where clarity lives, just beneath the noise. It’s about surrendering urgency so you can see things from a different angle, one that isn’t dictated by fear, habit, or old stories.
Sit quietly and take a few deep breaths. Place your hand on your stomach, just below your ribs. Think about a decision or question you want direction on. Now, ask your inner self what it knows. Don’t analyse or judge the response; just listen.
This is the practice of a wise mind, where emotion and logic meet in stillness. The Hanged Man invites clarity by surrender over force and fretting. When you stop trying to control the answer, the answer has a chance to speak.
vii. Embodiment
Tarot is lived, felt and suspended in the body, and The Hanged Man shows up somatically as the pause between impulses, the release of resistance, and the stillness that holds space for insight. It lives in the exhale, in the unclenching, in the moment you stop bracing for answers and let them arrive on their own. Consider these ways to embody The Hanged Man today:
Smell:
What does surrender smell like? Maybe it’s petrichor; and the scent of damp earth after the rain. Or steam rising from still water. Something quiet, clean, and a little unfamiliar. Like something you’ve smelled before but couldn’t name until now.
Body:
Where are you holding tension that isn’t helping? Is your neck tight from trying to see too far ahead? Are your shoulders creeping up from carrying questions you can’t answer yet? What shifts when you stop pushing and simply hang where you are?
Soundtrack:
What song feels suspended but deliberate? Think slow tempo, unresolved chords, space between the beats. Meditative versus melancholy. Music that invites reflection without giving answers. A sound that lets the moment stretch.
Action:
What can you not do today? Can you pause instead of pushing? Delay a decision out of respect for timing? Let something marinate before you label it? Let go of needing immediate resolution?
Nature cue:
Go outside. What reflects quiet suspension? A leaf frozen mid-fall in a web? A bird gliding without flapping? Water so still it mirrors back more than it moves? The kind of moment that asks to be witnessed.
Notice what quiets you:
The Hanged Man asks for a non-performing presence. Let this card remind you that wisdom often arrives in stillness. Pause long enough to feel where intentional surrender becomes insight.
viii. Your Impressions
Look at The Hanged Man card in your own deck if possible. Take a moment to notice without overthinking.
Where does your gaze land first - on the inverted figure, the serene expression, the halo of light, the bound foot, the crossed leg? Does it feel peaceful or precarious? Surrendered or stuck? Are you looking for tension or release?
Now check your body. Do you feel suspended? Stilled? Slightly disoriented or oddly calm? Is there an invitation to let go, or a quiet resistance to pause long enough to notice?
If this card could speak, it wouldn’t rush or explain. It would ask: What if clarity comes after the pause - and are you willing to stay still long enough to receive it?
ix. Intuitive Meaning
Use this space to explore what The Hanged Man means to you as a lived experience. Let it reflect where you’ve paused instead of pushed, surrendered control, questioned your momentum, or finally let something fall apart so something else could realign:
When have you chosen stillness over struggle, or wisdom over weakness?
Where are you holding on when release is what’s really needed?
What would it look like to trust the in-between without needing to rush to clarity?
Applied insight with a three-card reading using The Hanged Man as your anchor:
What perspective is trying to shift in me, and what resistance is keeping me stuck?
Where am I being asked to surrender defeat and trust in something deeper?
What part of my life would benefit from pause, reflection, or a complete reversal of approach?
Pull or shuffle-fling your cards. Feel into the gap between knowing and acting, between movement and meaning. Let the spread show you where hanging back is powerful.
Write your own Keywords
Write three words that echo your lived experience of The Hanged Man:
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x. Closing Reflection: Track Your Evolving Lens
Your relationship with each card will grow over time because it’s meant to shaped by your life. Consider the prompts below to revisit and reflect.
What I thought this card meant when I first pulled it: —————————————————
A recent experience that changed how I see it: —————————————————
How I feel about it now, in my body or life: —————————————————
What surprised me as this card kept showing up: —————————————————
One way this card is living in my life right now: —————————————————
If this card visited me today as a guide, what would it want me to remember? —————————————————
Revisit these after a week, a moon phase, or a meaningful moment. Let the card evolve as you do.
If you feel a quiet sense of recognition, curiosity and want to explore it, browse the sessions page for what feels right.