Was the Hanged Man hung as a traitor?

I do find some Masonic symbolism in the RWS, which makes sense, since Waite wrote about and practiced the craft. De Gebelin was also a Freemason but he didn't design a deck, only commented on the cards. Any connection probably ends with the Court. Thanks for the new link JMD, it might serve as a resource for RWS symbolism.

Is there any association between the Hanged Man and water, other than the GD association of Mem to that arcana?

perhaps Ettiella offers a link to water, he was first to ascribe Elemental influences to Tarot in print... im still looking

Interesting Insight to Traitor Theory

This is in reference earlier to the comment made: "Was the Hanged Man hung as a traitor?"

I reacently had come back from traveling to Ani, Turkey which was once Armenia. I have found and documented interesting imagry on the origin of the hanged man that lends me to believe early interpretations as traitor.

This is my link the pictures are worth taking a look at notice the guards on either side of the hanged man.

http://nancy.hootmedia.com/ani/index.html

In early Christian Europe, the problem of how best to proselytize the illiterate Teutonic and Celtic masses became a major headache for Pope Gregory the Great and his missionaries from Rome. Aside from incorporating old pagan beliefs and practices into the fabric of the new Christian religion, one of the chief ideas suggested to Gregory by his advisor Augustine was to use the arts to capture the people’s imaginations the architecture, sculpture, and paintings of cathedrals, the poetry and music of the liturgical rituals. In the ninth century and tenth centuries, drama was added to the list of inducements, primarily through the offices of the Benedictine monasteries that developed it. And this is where we discover the location of our genuine tarot mysteries

Hi luh3417,

Thank you very, very much for sharing the image with us. When I was first looking at it I was trying to figure out what was going on.

I did some research and found that it is probably a picture of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Is that your impression as well? He is the patron saint of Armenia.

I found a site that that talks about the church, part of a large site about Ani. http://www.virtualani.freeserve.co.uk/

On the page discussing The Church of Saint Gregory of Tigran Honents it says:
"The interior is entirely covered with frescoes of the same date as the church. They have two main themes - the Life of Christ and the Life of Saint Gregory the Illuminator (to whom the church was dedicated)."

...

"The western chamber of the church contains 16 scenes from the life of Saint Gregory the Illuminator - including his trial before king Trdat; the various tortures inflicted upon him (including his imprisonment in a pit); the martyrdom of St. Hripsime; the baptism of King Trdat and the kings of Georgia, Abkhazia, and Caucasian Albania; etc."

http://www.virtualani.freeserve.co.uk/tigranhonents/index.htm

Do you know if we are looking at one of the tortures? Or is it specifically him being lowered into the pit?

--Edited to add..
On this site I found more info on the tortures. It says:
"The second torture was more severe. For seven days he was suspended, upside down from one foot, as dung was burned from below and ten men flogged him with green rods. Throughout the ordeal Gregory never ceased from praying for the salvation awaiting him. At the completion of the second torture, Gregory was ready to receive eternal life and dared the king to execute him. But Drtad wanted to punish him for his insulting attitude towards the gods of the state and for his obstinacy."
http://www.armenianchurch.org/church/gregory3.html

I'd say that is almost certainly what is being portrayed in the image. --

The similiarity to the iconography of the Hanged Man is, I think, very striking.

I'm spending more time seeing if I can find any other depictions of St. Gregory the Illuminator like this.

It would be an amazing discovery indeed to find that The Hanged Man descended from the iconography of the life of St. Gregory the Illuminator.

Again, many thanks for sharing the image.

best,
robert

Given my own personal interests, I find this is one of the most interesting finds.

Here we have a number of factors coming together - apart from the very obvious similarity of iconography.

On the one hand, we have an area rich in crusader activity, and if nothing else, the legend of St Gregory and his hanging by one foot in persecution would have been brought back - whether or not this was later included in popular thinking with Jewish hangings, it would certainly allow for an ambiguity of intended image denotation.

On the other, we have here what I call a completion of iconographic religious carving or painting dating from Romanesque and Lumiere (Gothic) era - this was the only 'missing' image... and so for me becomes of even greater significance.

Hanged Man & St. Gregory

Thanks for the site suggestions on The Church Of Saint Gregory of Tigran Honents. Information on the history sheds new light on the roles that the guards/men torturing him are doing.

As far as looking at which one of the tortures he is going through. It’s difficult to figure out what is lying underneath St. Gregory do to the white washing of the frescoes that took place some time in the early 1990’s. It is second in the sequence of distinguishable images showing St. Gregory hanging. I can make out about ten or more men and they all seem to have reeds in their hand each taking a turn on flogging him. I would be in the camp of interpreting it as the second torture.

Just wanted to say thanks to all of you for the comments made so far as to this information shared on the striking similarity to St. Gregory and the Hanged Man.

Summing up and collecting my thoughts

The early Hanged Man images appear to be related to secular shame paintings. In essence, the shame painting can be seen to imply a familiar depiction of punishment and martyrdom. The imagery found in Ani can be reasonably hypothesized as derived from the early Georgian Orthodox.

Along with the modern theorists the hanged man St. Gregory the Illuminator will now have to join the distinguished list of such interpretations as: Judas Iscariot from the fifteen-century Rosenwald deck, Francesco Sforza’s father, Muzio Attendolo, Botticelli’s Napoleone Francese, and Levi’s Prometheus and many others.

This early religious imagry seems to have influenced the Benedictine Monasteries who encouraged the development of tarot archetypes through the arts. These instructions were given under the direction of Pope Gregory the Great.

Of significant omission from the list of 'distinguished' hanged men are the unfortunate Jewish hangings, discussed earlier on the thread The Hanged Man... death of a Jew in Christian lands?

It is this factor that personally makes me hesitant to see the hanged man as principally a secular shame hanging (which appears to be of more Italianate origin), than a serious punishment of possible spiritual or religious significance with reference to orthodoxy.

I agree.

For me, Le Pendu, The Hanged Man, has been "the" enigma to the rest of the deck... hence my namesake.

Most, if not all, of the other majors are fairly "universal" as far as country of origin. I've pointed out before that, to me, the Hanged Man is the only card that seemed to specifically point to Italy.

Another aspect is that so many of the cards seem to be religously related. Why add a card about a "Traitor" to deck??.. to me it seems out of place. Now, with the possibility that we are seeing a manifestation of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, I can finally find Le Pendu tied clearly to a religious origin.

Of course, the image from Ani is at this stage just an image with similarities to other found in the time period, and doesn't prove anything... but the possibility has been opened more so than before, to me, that the images ***may*** not be of Italian origin.

best,
robert