The Traitor Tarot Card Meaning and Art Alleged Tarot Deck
Designation
About the Deck
Alleged Tarot Deck
A modern digital cartoon deck featuring traditional symbolism in a whimsical stick-figure style.
Provenance
Damian Cugley. Web, 2002. Used with permission of the artist.
Tags
Meaning of The Traitor from the Alleged Tarot Deck
Upright
sacrifice, dedication
Reversed
dissatisfaction, apathy
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Hanged Man. This is the symbol which is supposed to represent Prudence, and Eliphas Levi says, in his most shallow and plausible manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart from any real value on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short stake driven into the ground.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound
Reversed
Selfishness, Unbound, Partial sacrifice.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Trials. Sacrifice.