Invisible Action

The Hanged Man

May 18, 2023

As the Hanged Man called to me this morning, so too did Jenny Odell’s book, How to Do Nothing Resisting the Attention Economy Towards the end of the book, Odell describes attending a tech conference, and walking outside to be in nature during a presentation:

“Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a drop out. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention.” (p.185)

Much of Odell’s book is centered on the critical nature of our distraction from technology and the perils it implies. If you haven’t read it yet, it is on my “highly recommend” list. The Hanged Man seems to me like Odell, someone who needs to take break from the noise, in some ways like the solitary Hermit, but different in so far as this is a point in the Fool’s Journey where doing nothing is critical for acceptance of one’s situation, in order to make the invisible visible, the unconscious conscious..

Of the Hanged Man Jessica Dore writes:

“But with its image of a man hanging upside down, this card whispers secrets of a perspective shift, the flipping of an assumption on its head.” (Tarot for Change, p.83)

This shift, for me, is acceptance. The Hanged Man represents the suspension, the pausing essential to enacting change in life. This is not passive stopping, it is the active stopping which can allow the opaque and misunderstood to come to the surface and be seen, and in the process, allow acceptance of whatever situation you have been denying to become palpable.

It can’t be ignored that The Hanged Man appears as the twelfth card in the Major Arcana, about half way through the Fool’s Journey. Twelve is an important number. There are twelve signs in the zodiac, twelve Apostles of Jesus, in fact in the book of Revelations, the number twelve is mentioned twenty-two times. Sri Aurobindo describes the twelve dimensions of the universe. In the Koran there are twelve Imams. We can see that The Hanged Man in position twelve is a cosmic force.

But the practical person in me recognizes that hanging upside down for prolonged periods of time is probably going to be uncomfortable, even with a halo around your head. Michelle Tea says in Modern Tarot, that discomfort is essential to the Hanged Man, “settling in to a self-imposed purgatory.” (p.88) Relaxing into the discomfort, as we perhaps settle into an extended Warrior One position in yoga, or a particularly long meditative sit, is going to make the whole process much easier. Have you ever known what you have to do, but have fought against it so hard, struggled, refused, battled, denied, lived in extreme discomfort until….until….until….you finally accept what is. Hanging from that tree becomes a lot easier when you accept that this is what is happening, that this suspension is for growth, and you will come out stronger the other side. Thus, we see the golden light that surrounds his head.