The Hanged Man is the dead end, the rock bottom, and the times when you struggle but couldn’t find a job to save your life.
Right now my life exactly The Hanged Man. I’m broke. I’ve been trying to make money online since the beginning of 2015 without much success. And my girlfriend just broke up with me. It feels like there is nothing but pain in life, and that whatever I do won’t make a damn difference.
Life feels like a constant struggle without any hope for a resolve.
The Hanged Man represents a standstill. Maybe your career isn’t going anywhere, maybe your relationship isn’t going anywhere.
Worse, The Hanged Man often means you are not in control, the only thing you could do is to accept your fate and stop struggling.
While it doesn’t mean that you (or rather, I) should believe you will have to suffer poverty for your whole life, it does mean that this particular job might not work for you no matter how you try.
And it sometimes mean no matter how much we loved someone, how much we wanted a relationship to happen, sometimes it won’t and we can do nothing about it.
This card represents the agony that comes with such realizations, and how we try to deny it and suffer. “No, it mustn’t be true. We love each other so much, it’s bound to work.” You might find yourself constantly thinking about this, and then struggle and fail.
We often don’t get what we want in life, or at least don’t decide when we will get it. The pain comes from our unwillingness to accept reality.
So the way out of The Hanged Man is to simply give up. Give up on that career. Give up on that love. Give up on that unrealistic dream. Or accept that you have already wasted your youth and it won’t ever come back.
It’s painful. But by giving up we can finally move on. The pain, or rather, our willingness to embrace the pain, will turn into great strength to do whatever we decide to do next.
One of the keywords of this card is sacrifice. You always get something by giving up, even if it’s just the peace of mind. Till today I still didn’t get the two months’ paycheck from my first job, but at least I’m not obsessed with it, it’s not in my mind most of the time, and I’m happy for that.
The Hanged Man could also mean literally sacrifice your life for what’s more important. I doubt this interpretation would ever appear in a reading, but a parent still may sacrifice his life for a child.
This card could also mean sacrificing the material for the spiritual. In today’s world, I don’t think you will see this happen often.