Tarot's The Hanged Man: An Upside Down Peace

Release Fear and the Illusion of Control

We are currently in Scorpio season, whose card is Death. Pulling the Death card does not mean that you are going to die tomorrow. The Death card represents transformation.

Nothing is ever born without a death and nothing can die without rebirth. When a child is born, there is a death of a pregnancy. When a marriage begins, there is a death of an engagement.

The Hanged Man precedes the Death card, and it is really in The Hanged One that we do the preparation for the liberation that comes with Death.

By the time the baby is born, the mother is ready to no longer carry the child inside her. Once a wedding has been planned and the vows have been spoken, the couple has long since been ready to legalize their union. Similarly, if a marriage ends, by the time divorce papers are signed, the union has long since dissolved.

In the Hanged Man, we see someone strung upside down. A golden Halo surrounds his head. His posture is somewhat unnatural, and yet he is relaxed. If you have ever held a challenging yoga pose like tree pose or a headstand, you may be familiar with the feeling of The Hanged Man’s surrender to discomfort.

There is no telling how long he has been hanging or how and when he will come down. He occupies a sense of timelessness, a liminal space.

While The Hanged Man can feel like a stuck place in which nothing is happening, he is there by his own free will. He stays in this pose until he has gained the spiritual insight that comes from looking at the world with a new perspective, from upside down.

When we find ourselves in Hanged Man energy, it can feel like we are stuck and nothing is changing, but that's because the change is taking place internally.

It's natural to experience resistance in the Hanged Man. How we handle that resistance is really the lesson here.

For example, while nobody enjoys it when suddenly the sun sets at 5 pm, how we react to this external change can help prepare us for the winter months ahead. What are the unexpected gifts that come with early nights?

Did you get some extra sleep? Did that experience inform you that you may need to go to bed at an earlier time more regularly?

While I don't love that my 5 pm dog walk is suddenly in the dark, I do look forward to seeing all the other puppers with their light-up collars in the park.

Sometimes Hanged Man energy can also arise when we are struggling through growth.

For example, in my business I know there are new offerings that want to come through me, and yet, I know I must give up some of the effort that I am currently spending on more reactionary tasks.

The brain likes to kick up all kinds of stories that if we allow one part of work to be phased out, there won't be enough for us on the other side of what we now desire most. The more we struggle to keep doing it all, the more difficult the discomfort will feel. What we resist persists.

A beautiful way to work with this discomfort is by taking a retreat. That can mean a silent meditation, or a physical retreat to a space without the pulls and distractions of our everyday responsibilities.

If the word surrender sounds like a huge mistake to our egos, which demand to maintain an illusion of control over all things big and small. But it's just that, an illusion.

In The Hanged Man, we get to stay in our discomfort until we realize that the only real control we have is how we approach our own thoughts.

This can be a tough reality to contend with, because those controlling beliefs masqueraded as safety, but in fact, they cannot come with us into our next phase of expansion.

If we allow The Hanged Man to support us beyond the discomfort of not knowing, not having control, we can shed some of the ego's illusions. When Temperance greets us on the other side, we see that the Divine is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

If you are working with The Hanged Man, I encourage you to stay curious about any discomforting 'stuck' feelings that arise. It may not be that there is an actual problem to solve, but rather, some limiting belief is ready to be released.

No matter what the external outcome of an election, a project, or a relationship, in this work we can gain a greater and more profound connection to our highest selves, one that we might not have ever known was possible.