A thread to discuss the iconography of The Hanged Man

From this thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=327

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

Baffled (defeated): subjected to public disgrace. Literally, of the punishment of a recreant knight who was hung up by his heels.

quote:
A cowardly braggart of a soldier is made in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays* to describe the treatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was at length found out, and stripped of his lion's skin: "They hung me up by the heels and beat me with hazel sticks, . . . that the whole kingdom took notice of me for a baffled whipped fellow." The word to which I wish here to call your attention is ' baffled.' ^ Probably if you were reading, there would be nothing here to cause you to pause; you would attach to the word the meaning which sorts very well with the context—" hung up by the heels and beaten, all his schemes of being thought much of were baffled and defeated." But the word means a great deal more than this; it contains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according to which a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or more-commonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his escutcheon blotted, his spear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject of all kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be ' baffled’. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment is described:

" And after all, fop greater infamy
He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And baffled so, that all which passed by
The picture of his punishment might see.” $•

Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men were not so remote from the days of chivalry but that this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much more to them than to us, so long as we are ignorant of the same, would those words I just quoted have conveyed ?

* A King and no King, iii. 1.
^ See Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. iii. pp. 827, 1218: Ann. 1513, 1570.
$ Fairy queen, 6. 7. 27 ; cf. 5. 3. 37.
end quote: English past and present (1855) by Richard Chenevix Trench p.141/142

And in Shakespeare, for example in King Richard II, Act I, Scene I Norfolk says:

I am digrac’d, impeach’d, and baffled here;

Quote
Baffled is here employed in the general sense of being treated with ignominy; but it particularly, and Nares says originally, meant, a degrading punishment inflicted on recreant knights: one part of which consisted in hanging them up by the heels.

... To this signification of the word Falstaff seems to allude when he says in "Henry IV" Part I. Act I. Sc. 21,—
" An I do not, call me villain, and baffle me." And afterwards, ibid., Act II. Sc. 4 :—
"If thou do it half so gravely, so majestically both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker," &c,
End quote of note a: on page 450 of The plays of Sheakespeare, Volume 1 (1858) Howard Staunton, Sir John Gilbert.

In 2 Henry IV (i.2) also, the Chief-Justice says to Falstaff “to punish him by the heels would amend the attention of his ears”.

quote:
BAFFLE, BAFFUL} v.(Fr.) To treat with indignity ; to expose. Properly speaking, to baffle or bafful a person was to reverse a picture of him in an ignominious manner.

Baffulling is a greatt disgrace among the Scots, and it is used when a man is openly perjured, and then they make an image of him painted, reversed, with his heels upward, with his name, woondering, crying, and blowing out of him with horns. Hollinshed. And after all, for greater infamy,

He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And baffled°so, that all which passed by
The picture of his punishment might see,
And by the like ensample warned be,
However they through treason do trespass.
Spenser, F. Q., B. VI, vii, 27.

I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here,
Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd
вреаг. К. Richard П, i, 1.

(2) v. To cheat, or make a fool
of; to manage capriciously or
wantonly ; to twist irregularly
together. East.

(3) In Suffolk they term baffled, corn which is knocked down by the wind.

(4) v. To twist or entangle. Northampt.

BAFFLING, s. Opprobrium ; affront.
end quote: Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English by Thomas Wright

It's fascinating how words can change meaning over time. I've read those verses from the Faery Queen without realizing what they really meant. Thanks for this Steve.

Pen

That is very interesting Steve!
I was searching for some roots of the the word Cheat and found this
CHEAT
c.1375, aphetic of O.Fr. escheat, legal term for revision of property to state when owner dies without heirs, lit. "that which falls to one," pp. of escheoir "befall by chance, happen, devolve," from V.L. *excadere "to fall away," from L. ex- "out" + cadere "to fall" (see case (1)). Meaning evolved through "confiscate" (c.1440) to "deprive unfairly" (1590).

It seems to me that wrongdoing always has this sense of falling down, dropping down, upside down-The wrong way.
Which makes perfect sense of course.
The Italian for the Cheat is l'imbroglione (which is the term the players told me they called The Hanged Man)
Latin for cheat is impono - which has the sense of the little reverse
~Lorredan

Baffle is said to come from the French Bafouer - to mock without mercy, to treat with outrageous contempt, to ridicule, to trample, boo, vilify; it also means 'to attach by a rope'.

When he called me, he called me his lover,
...

as per Politically Incorrect Tarot Readings on facebook:


The Hanged Man
Everything looks cool as shit when you're upside down, but the longer you sit there the worse your headache will be.

Being hung upside down is not a privilege of the martyrs

Conques
Hortus Deliciarum (c. 1130)

I was reading something a few weeks ago (sorry, can't even remember where I came across it).. and the point was that in Dante's version of Hell... the absolute worse offence... those who deserved the very deepest level of Hell... were Traitors.

See this:
http://www.wsu.edu/~alake/the_circles_of_hell.htm


Other images...




I don't know why it struck me so heavily, I guess I never really made the connection before. I've known for some time that the Hanged Man was a bad card, but I guess it still didn't really hit me that compared to all of the other sins in the world, the absolute worst in the mind of Dante, (and quite likely those influenced by him, as I assume is likely with the inventor of tarot), was to be a traitor. And with that in mind, the proximity of this card to Death and the Devil sure does make a lot of sense. In a way, I can also see the Hanged Man in a way that I've never seen before, as representing "the greatest sinner"... about to meet his maker.