Tying Your Own Noose
Per special request, this week we are going to
explore The Hanged Man. Traditionally,
this card depicts a male figure hanging upside down by one leg, hanging helplessly
in negative space and unable to free himself.
Hanged Man |
This card, in my experience has layers of
meaning and can help or hinder the seeker when it comes up in a reading. For me, it plays heavily on the cards that
are surrounding it for whether it is having a negative impact or positive on
the the person getting a reading.
The Hanged Man can create a sense of
helplessness, frustration, and victimization.
You are bound and helpless to the situation at hand. You feel adrift,
without anchor and have a tendency to let things happen to you rather than
taking a stand and making what you want to happen.
This card can indicate that the person getting
the reading is is being pulled in two different directions and can't see the
way out. It is warning that the recipient
has a tendency to blindly follow routine and to resign themselves to their
fate.
On the flip side this card can be a wake up
call that the person needs to shift their perspective.
When we are faced with a problem and can not
seem to break through and find a solution we need to turn our thinking upside
down. We need to explore unexpected
avenues for a solution. An outside
perspective can help because many times we are too close to the problem to see
the solution.
Safety can create stagnation.
The position the Hanged Man is in is hardly
safe. It is a precarious perch, that if
he falls can create severe injury or even death. We sometimes need that wake up call. We need to be challenged, we need to make our
thoughts uncomfortable or we risk rusting.
The rewards for this kind of thinking is to
reach a kind of illumination that you would not normally achieve. One example
of this would be Odin. He sacrificed
Himself to Himself for knowledge. This
was not altruistic sacrifice, but selfish; He acted to gain knowledge for
Himself. In so doing, He gained a
greater insight into the world and how it worked as well as the Runes.
Shifting our perspective helps bring bright
illumination to a problem; almost Eureka flashes of knowledge that help us see
what we are being pulled between and which situation will lead to what we
desire to happen.
In essence, this card is about freedom and
slavery. We can either be slaves of our
own self- victimization or we can free our consciousness from tired old ways of
thinking. If you are meditating on this card try and use it as an insipiraton
to shake up your world view and be uncomfortable with your world. Sometimes you have to be willing to make a
sacrifice in order for things to get back on the right track.
Practical Pathworking
Hanged Man from the Thoth Tarot |
Yay! Thank you so much for writing up this post :)
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