78 Weeks of Tarot: The Hanged Man

[Trogon]

For information on what these threads refer to, see this thread;

 

78 Weeks of Tarot - Informational Thread

 

The above linked thread gives suggested dates for the cards as well as links to the individual topics.

 

Some of us may be working through the study in a different order and using different decks. If you have general questions or comments regarding the 78 Weeks of Tarot study group, please post in the topic in the above link.

 

Have fun.

[Bookworm]

Deck: Fairytale Tarot

 

Card name: The Hanged Man

 

First impressions:

 

A young man, colorfully dressed, in a kind of jestery way, dangles by one leg over a bridge. The rope holding his right leg is held with some difficulty by a woman in a fancy dress and matching hat. A large pink scarfy thing hangs from the top of her conical hat. Part of the scarf makes the shape of a silhouette of a man. It’s weird. Several other people, including a couple of children lean over the bridge to look at the man, who is kind of smiling up at the woman holding the rope. The bridge is made of stone. The upper body of the man hangs over an archway in the bridge. There are occasional plants growing out of the cracks in the bridge.The sky is partly cloudy.

 

I read this story previously but I can’t really recall it. I think this might be some kind of scam being perpetrated by the man and the woman, but I don’t really remember. The impression is not one of great seriousness, which is kind of weird for this card.

 

From the book:

 

Keywords and phrases: Transcendance and illumination, spiritual surrender, sacrifice -- usually of the ego, letting go of material concerns, enlightenment -- perhaps by seeing things a whole new way, detachment from selfish considerations, a state of mental suspension from everyday things, letting go.

 

The story chosen to illustrate this card may well be one of the most controversial in the deck.

 

According to Robert O’Neill in Tarot Symbolism, The image of the Hanged Man can clearly be seen as a “shame painting.” Criminals who escaped justice were often depicted on the outside wall of the jail in this embarrassing inverted position. Traitors were often depicted that way on bridges.

 

The card may have originally stood for Traitor. It has now changed its usual meaning entirely. Nowadays there is a strong aura of self-sacrifice in seeking the truth. Today this card tells us that giving up the ego is necessary to gain insight and enlightenment. Giving up part of yourself, or what you hold dear, will certainly be uncomfortable, but it may be the only way to gain the ability to see the world through new eyes. Sometimes we have to submit to some stress in order to allow ourselves to undergo a mental transformation.

 

The Shifty Lad is certainly not about spirituality -- rather it plays with the idea of the inevitability of fate and justice catching up with the selfish and callous. Is the Shifty Lad transformed? Perhaps, right before he dies, but that is not the point of the story.

 

The original story:

 

The Shifty Lad, from The Lilac Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang,

 

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/lfb/li/lifb03.htm

 

Traditional meanings:

 

Letting go, sacrifice for gain, surrender, breaking patterns, a crisis, delays, seeing from another direction, a fresh perspective, suspension of activity, giving something up, experiencing a metamorphosis, spiritual advancement, a detachment from the material, in limbo, being narrow minded, not seeing from all sides, re-emergence, re-entering life, coming back to life, not letting go, having false motives, inability to release, holding yourself back, holding onto the material.

 

My impressions of the card/story combination:

 

My guess is that Karen could not find a story to capture the modern meaning of The Hanged Man, because, as she says, this story doesn’t really have anything to do with any of the meanings of that card (even as a Traitor). It’s much more of a Justice kind of story.

 

I’m not really complaining. I think The Hanged Man is a really difficult card to interpret, probably because it used to mean, as Karen mentioned, a Traitor. I do like the fact that it evolved over time to mean something quite different. There’s no reason, as far as I’m concerned, why Tarot meanings shouldn’t change over time. It does show, though, that even with the world of fairy tales to choose from, it doesn’t always work to try to glom Tarot onto something else.

 

My take (what I make of it/what I might see in a reading where I drew it):

 

I think I would now be more inclined to see the Hanged Man as serving a sentence, whether imposed by others or by oneself. The Hermit has some of this connotation for me too, so, to differentiate, I guess I would see it more as a public sentence, rather than something undergone in private. Shame might be involved.

 

I think I might also see it as a change in perspective -- maybe, as Karen suggests, submitting to stress in order to undergo a transformation.

[Hemera]

Everyday Witch Tarot (Llewellyn 2017)

The Hanged Man

 

Description:

A young male witch is hanging upside down from a broom which is attached to a tree. He has locked chains around his feet and hands - and looks like he holds a key to those locks as well.

 

What action is going on:

Very little action. His eyes are closed and there is hardly any motion anywhere in the picture. There is not even much wind. The sea in the background is calm. There are clouds gathering above the sea - or maybe they are moving away, it’s difficult to tell.

 

Images and Symbolism:

-He is holding a key in his hand. It must be the key to those two locks that keep him where he is.

-The tree he hangs from looks like a maple or a plane, which symbolises strength and endurance. It means some kind of an offering in Native American mythology, probably because of the sweet maple syrup

 

Colours:

-green and grey seem to dominate..

 

This card encourages:

-Carpe Diem

-insights, opening up

-changing one’s ways

-travels, initiations

-you’ll have to accept, or you’ll be forced by fate (-something C.G. Jung wrote much about!)

 

Warns against:

- trying a tour-de-force

 

Traditional meanings (J. Bunning):

-letting go, surrendering, accepting

-reverse; look from a new angle, change your mind

-suspend action, pause to reflect

-sacrifice

 

From the Book:

-Where in your life are you stuck?

-Simply hang around for a while.

-What you have been doing hasn’t been working. But the solution is right before your eyes.

 

Sallie Nichols: (in Jung and Tarot. An Archetypal Journey. Weiser 1984)

-He has “lost the dimension of depth” as Nichols quotes Paul Tillich, and he needs to find it in this way

-she reminds us that the tree is a universal mother/Goddess symbol

-He is suspended between Culture and Nature (the tree, and the broom that is made of the tree). He is between two worlds.

-The Why-Did-Fate-Pick-On-Me approach is a dead end.

-Neuroses and psychoses are stalemates like this; not diseases inhibiting life, but corrective measures to find new equilibrium.

 

Notes:

-I first thought that he was holding a toothbrush in his hand because at first glance the silver key looked like one! (lol) This deck is so down-to-earth in many ways that the thought didn’t even feel strange at first. Come to think of it, brushing your teeth is a Hanged-Man-kind-of activity, isn’t it. You just have to endure it and leave everything to the side, accept and surrender to the process