It depicts a pittura infamante, an image of a man being hung upside-down by one ankle. This method of hanging was a common punishment at the time for traitors in Italy. However, the solemn expression on his face traditionally suggests that he is there by his own accord, and the card is meant to represent self-sacrifice more so than it does corporal punishment or criminality.
In other interpretations, The Hanged Man is a depiction of the Norse god Odin, who suspended himself from a tree in order to gain knowledge.
In his book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, A. E. Waite, the designer of the Rider-Waite tarot deck, wrote of the symbol:
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 that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death. [...] 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.
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 that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death. [...] 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.
There is a halo burning brightly around the hanged man's head, signifying a higher learning or an enlightenment...
Tat Tvam Asi - तत्त्वमसि
