The Hanged Man
#1A thread to discuss the iconography of The Hanged Man
The Tarot will lose all its vitality for one who allows himself to be side-tracked by its pedantry. - Aleister Crowley
mjhurst wrote:I'm not a big fan of occult apologetics, but some of the best images of inverted hanging do come from martyrologies. There is an Italian one with several illustrations of assorted hangings, inverted and otherwise. Because these are shown as martyrs, some even include halos, foreshadowing Waite's Hanged Man. Naturally, both nobility and Christian virtue are depicted as stoic in extremis, but that kind of passivity was also commonly shown in anonymous souls being tormented in Hell, so nothing more than an artistic sensibility can be read into most of these images.
Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Gallonio-To ... dTorments/
The transcribed text is worth reading for several points, perhaps most notably for the comparison of all hanging ("suspension") with crucifixion. This is Galliano's justification for putting hangings first in his martyrology, because of the comparison with Jesus' death. This connects directly with a quote Ross' found from Alciato, where Tarot's Hanged Man is referred to as the crux.
Among other things, Galliano mentions St. Peter and St. Calliopus, who were crucified upside-down, and St. Gregory ("the Illuminator"), first Bishop to Armenia, who was tortured upside down. These have also been mentioned in regard to Tarot's Hanged Man. In 2005 Nancy Brown presented a couple pictures on Aeclectic of St. Gregory enduring the second of his twelve tortures. They were from the Church of Saint Gregory in Ani, built by Tigran Honents in the 13th century, and are apparently from the same time. Here's a pic of the poor guy.
And here are some of Galliano's martyrs, being hung in various creative ways, for your viewing pleasure.
That final picture is Jan Smit's execution, perhaps the best Hanged Man depiction I've found. It's by Jan Luiken, illustrating one of the victims in the Martyrs Mirror.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_Mirror
http://www.bethelks.edu/mla/holdings/sc ... 20p641.jpg
Best regards,
Michael
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