NMR ISSUE 39

Adjusting to Time Changes
Astrological Forecast 39
Bee and gopher
Crane
Editorial 39
Esoteric Symbology of the Tarot
Harvest
Letters 39
Meditations on the Elements: Fire
Pagans and the Net
The Joy of Death
The Sirius Connection
The Spirit's Dance

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The Esoteric Symbology of the Rider-Waite Tarot

The Hanged Man

By Gary Shook

The Hanged Man is a pivotal card in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and in many ways the preceding cards are merely a preparation for it. In the Wheel the seeker's true path was only alluded to, but in the Hanged Man it is finally made clear and known.

To help understand what this card actually means it helps to look at the Major Arcana broken down into thirds. In the first third, Fool to Lovers, we saw the Fool's fall back to the material world and his subsequent struggles to understand and conquer it. The Fool began the grand journey as Spirit and ended the first third with the Lovers in what may be the mortal plane's greatest attempt to find perfection. By the time the seeker has reached the Lovers he has found dead ends in attempts to progress following the masculine or feminine aspects of duality alone. He has learned that neither aspect by itself allows any real progress and that some form of balance or integration of them is essential. The Lovers represents this attempt by trying to bring the two halves of duality together in the joining of man to woman. Even today in our modern society we see the convention of marriage as the two becoming one. (It is unfortunate that the convention is so distorted by our patriarchal society that the female gives up all of herself to become one with the male. She takes the man's name and becomes him as Mrs. John Doe, rather than a more balanced custom in which both parties leave aspects of themselves behind in the joining.)

The second third of the Major Arcana finds the seeker in the Chariot. Here he has reached the zenith of what the physical plane represents, the master of himself and all that surrounds him. But in the very essence of the Chariot is the need to move beyond and to progress to something greater. In the Chariot the question: is there something more to life?, is asked and the answer is Yes! In this third the seeker attempts to define what that more is and find the path to it. This third of the journey ends in the Hanged Man and the Death cards, where that which he has sought is revealed and the doorway to that path placed before him. While all the cards of the Major Arcana make up the path of the seeker, the spiritual/inner/higher path begins in the final third which we will examine in future articles.

It is almost impossible to discuss the symbolic elements of the Hanged Man without looking at the Death card as well. These two cards can be seen as two sides of a coin when viewed in the terms of the Western mystery tradition, or even modern Wicca. The coin is the initiatory experience, and the Hanged Man and Death can depict its beginning and end. In the Hanged Man the blindfold is removed and the seeker is challenged with the knowledge of where his true path leads. He also comes into realization of how great a sacrifice is required to finally set foot on that path. In the mystery traditions, as in Wicca, the Death at the end of initiation is not just an ending, but (more important) a new beginning. In the Tarot this beginning is one of starting the inner journey to becoming the spirit of the Fool once more.

Symbolic Elements of the Hanged Man

The card's number is twelve and in numerology that number is most often ascribed to completion. Twelve can be seen as complete today in the hours in the day (and night), the months of the year, the signs of the Zodiac, the simple letters in Hebrew and even in the days of Christmas. In the Hanged Man one part of the seeker's journey is now complete and he shall soon begin the next.

In this card the seeker hangs by one foot from a tree. Various authors have called it the Mother Tree, the Tree of Odin, the World Tree, the Cabalistic Tree and the Tree of Life. Depending on your viewpoint the Hanged Man's tree can fit any of those paradigms and more. I prefer to take a narrower view of the tree as representing the seeker's material world, or the tree of his material life. In the card the tree is literally his world as there is no other background or physical objects shown. That this is a tree, and not a gibbet, is shown in the green leaves which grow from it.

The seeker hangs upside down on the tree and now sees the world from a very different perspective. His values and ideas have been turned upside down as well and this has allowed him to perceive things that before had been occluded by his very life. The Hanged Man does not represent the seeker's death, but it is certainly preparatory to it. Before this point death was something the seeker avoided at all costs, but now it is clearly seen and welcomed. This is symbolized in the Hanged Man's open eyes, now seeing what is before him, and in his expression. His face is one of calm resolve, not of fear or apprehension.

The Hanged Man's halo is one of enlightenment. It is the light of understanding—that which was hidden is now brought into the light and understood.

The duality that has been so prevalent in the prior cards is still with us, but harder to see than before. As in the Magician card, the Hanged Man wears a belt around his waist to symbolize the division between the dualities. In the Magician the division was shown as the Oroboros, or World Snake. This was a material symbol and divided the physical duality within the male/female Magician. In the Hanged Man the belt is a purple cord, purple being the color of high spirituality. As the cord is attached to the seeker's physical body the symbolism here is the division on an inner or personal spiritual level. The seeker as Hanged Man now sees the path ahead as one that leads within himself, on a highly spiritual level. This is supported in the Hanged Man's body position, with the legs in the shape of the number four, and the arms held in the shape of a triangle (representing the number three). Again we turn to numerology in which the number four represents the material (Earth, Air, Fire and Water = the material) and three represents the divine or Spirit. Added together four and three equal seven, which is the number of perfection. The four and the three of the Hanged Man must now be brought together in the remaining aspects of the seeker's journey.

This is part of a series of articles on the esoteric symbology of the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Dr. Waite spoke to us not in words, but in hidden symbols. Symbols are truly the universal language expressing ideas in a way that, with study and contemplation, all can understand. But this understanding may not be the same for everyone who seeks it. While symbols do speak to all who will listen, they may say different things to different people. To truly understand the archetypal symbology of the Tarot, you must listen to a chorus of voices, not just one. Read as many different explanations as you can on the Tarot, and then the true meanings of the symbols will naturally come to you from within.