I’ve posted some of this before but since I’m doing a membership drive for tarot funding right now, I thought it would be the perfect time to revisit my drafts for the Hanged One.

Here’s the card in its most recognizable incarnation from the Colman-Smith deck. Hanged Man and Hanged Woman seem to be in equal use these days depending on the deck.

I prefer Hanged One to remove the binary division. That’s going to be more challenging for me with other cards in the deck, but since it’s an easy substitution to do here, I will.

I’ve been the Hanged One many times in my life. I think of it as a kind of “wait and see” card. Maybe the best action to take right now is no action. Maybe you need a period of discomfort (though not mortal danger) to figure out what step is next.  In the card above, created by Pamela Coleman Smith, you see that the person is hanging by one foot. They don’t seem to be stressed or struggling. They just have to be upside down for now.

I made lots of drafts of hanged one cards because (a) they’re fun to make, and (b) I don’t really know which of them is going to fit best with the rest of the deck yet. Each of the four minor arcana suits will relate to an element (air, fire, water, earth), and the major arcana will have a different set of visual themes, but I don’t yet know what they are. So I just kept making them.

This was the first one I made and also helped me come up with the set of visual guidelines that I applied to all the drafts that followed. I wanted it to have some architectural element, some kind of sky element (or sky referent), a referent to one of the other four natural elements, and I wanted the face to be covered or obscured (some of these figures are very famous people and when the deck is finished, I don’t want people using them to get caught up in trying to identify who the person is because like an archetype, it should be rather universal.

Draft 2

Draft 3

The function of the architectural element in the cards I’m designing is to provide the figure with support. They’re upside down, but they’re fully supported. Also, for anyone familiar with tarot readings, you’ll know that cards can also be read in their reversed position–so if the card is upside down in the reading, a reader may provide the querent with a slightly modified interpretation. I wanted these cards to make sense right side up and reversed. In the reversed position, the architecture becomes even more important because none of these hanged ones have their feet on the ground. The architectural elements provide support in either direction.

Draft 4

Draft 5

Draft 6

I had all but decided that draft 6 wasn’t going to be the one, until a few days ago.  Draft 6 introduces a setting that won’t be used in any other of the suits—the stars. To me it makes sense for the most archetypal group of cards, the Major Arcana, to have some sort of celestial connection. Since the four suits of the minor arcana have now taken shape, I think that the other drafts of this card will seem too different from the minor arcana and I want visual cohesion as well as easy legibility. 

Not knowing which of these aesthetics to use for the Major Arcana was keeping me hung up on really starting that big and important group. I was the hanged one. But now I think I can extricate myself from the prickly situation and move forward.

I’ll be previewing more of the Major Arcana and my process during this second membership drive for tarot funding!