<P> A 1393 decree for Milan and Lombardy of the punishment for traitors: "Let him be drug (dragged) on a (wooden) plank at a horse's tail to the place of execution, and there be suspended by one foot to the gallows, and be left there until he is dead . As long as he lives let him be given food and drink ." </P> <P> Modern versions of the tarot deck depict a man hanging upside - down by one foot . The figure is most often suspended from a wooden beam (as in a cross or gallows) or a tree . Ambiguity results from the fact that the card itself may be viewed inverted . </P> <P> In his book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, A.E. Waite, the designer of the Rider - Waite tarot deck, wrote of the symbol: </P> <P> The gallows from which he is suspended forms a Tau cross, while the figure--from the position of the legs--forms a fylfot cross . There is a nimbus about the head of the seeming martyr . It should be noted (1) that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; (2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death . (...) It has been called falsely a card of martyrdom, a card of prudence, a card of the Great Work, a card of duty (...) I will say very simply on my own part that it expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe . </P>

Meaning of the tarot card the hanged man