Note: This text was the original inspiration for an essay I wrote in Cadell Last’s great new anthology: Abyssal Arrows - Spiritual Leadership inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra: In Chapter 24: The Hanged Man, The Hermit, and The Star, I explore correspondences between Niezschean and Tarot symbolism in more detail.
The Hanged Man is the man between worlds. He represents the in-between state—that, like The Hanged Man, we are literally hanging in the air. And yet the Hanged Man has a faint smile and a halo, which indicates he is full of what Frederic Nietzsche called Amor Fati, or love of fate. So even if The Hanged Man's world has been turned on its head, he fully accepts the situation—he is full of unreasonable joy—beyond hope or fear.
According to Valentin Tomberg, The Hanged Man represents the epiphany of the Biblical Job, whose 'upright' world of status, family, and good fortune—gets turned on its head. We all experience a different version of the Job archetype when our world gets turned upside-down. Like Job, there are times when we shake our fists at God and ask, 'Why me?’. We feel like a plaything of an arbitrary game between God and the devil, condemned for a crime we never committed.
The ‘job archetype’ might consist of a sudden illness, losing a loved one, or a wildfire that destroys our home. Like the Hanged Man, we suddenly find ourselves in 'the upsidedown’. And yet, if we can see it through the confusion and endure the suffering of Job, we are rewarded with a higher vision. Like Job after his trials, we are given a vision of the rainbow.
Tomberg points out that The Hanged Man represents “reverse gravity” and alternate states—the upward gravity of heaven rather than earth. This brings to mind shamanistic or yogic rituals where one hangs upside-down. Fasting, vision quests, and psychedelic trips—afford us glimpses of a world that doesn't follow the ordinary script. We obtain practical and spiritual knowledge outside a closed-loop system; we break the frame and boundaries of ordinary perception.
The Hanged man's state of ‘Samadi' or absorption in the divine, symbolised by his halo, could become disassociation and delusion—or so-called spiritual bypassing. On the other hand, it could be very healthy to turn things upside-down, in the same way that standing on one's head in a yogic posture helps recirculate energy. To understand the real, we have to experience the upside-down occasionally—or the surreal. By fully accepting our strange predicament and lack of control, paradoxically, we develop faith in ourselves—and learn to rely on inspiration beyond circumstances.
The Hanged Man represents faith rather than reason, magic as opposed to mechanics—what we can't explain in rational or propositional terms. His inspiration comes outside of the known. His elation comes from exchanging ‘self-power’—for 'other power' or divine knowledge; he has embraced the crucifixion of his ego. What can we learn from him? When we have our' hands tied' like the Hanged Man, we must relinquish control, rely on leaps of faith, and sometimes turn things upside-down.
Finally, the Hanged Man represents a joyful sacrifice, a "Rosy Crucifixion", to reference the title of Henry Miller's book. This is particularly important in our present time with its gloomy nihilism and depression. Jonathan Pageau says we live in 'the upside-down—but still, we can remain cheerful, even in the face of our own personal or the collective apocalypse. The Hanged Man is a death initiation, a dark rite of passage that leads to a new realm. In the larger culture, it represents the death of the technological and spiritual paradigm and the intuition of the new. In the meantime, despite tragedy, we have to live in the present and enjoy the place between worlds. We need to have faith that a new world is on the horizon. The Hanged Hanged is the arcana of faith.
The Hanged Man is also the original trump card—he shows us that things are not what they seem. There may be no hope within the present paradigm to save our world; however, we can find renewal by allowing the old world to die naturally.
The Hanged Man is the human predicament and the human redemption. But our redemption entails a radical acceptance of fate and relying on higher inspiration instead of will-to-power.
This article is part of a consideration of our study group on symbolism and Psychomagic. If you want to become a member and join one of our study groups, please write to me at andrewpgsweeny@gmail.com or check out the events calendar below for more details.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Parallax to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.