HANGED MEN BY JONATHAN KANEKO-JAMES.

The Hanged Man is one of my favourite images from the Thoth

Tarot. It’s a card with a clean, soothing feel to it that
completely belies the usually rather undesirable
connotations linked with it. Crowley reckons it to be a
watery card, linking it with Illusion. He eschews sacrifice
and the notion of the cards meaning redemption, because
redemption implies debt and there can be no debt after the
ordeal the Hanged man has been through. He also likens it
to the Cenotaph as a sign of how to rectify things if we
ever fall into a new dark age.

Crowley’s Hanged Man is nominally Wotan, but with

thoroughly Kabbalistic influences -- his backdrop, which to
me looks like the tiled wall of a swimming pool changing
room, is the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trimagestus. He
hangs the wrong way up the Kabbalistic Tree -- with his
head at the roots of the tree, in Malkuth and his feet at
in the three ‘Supernal’, or originating, Sephirah. There
are three green disks, one at the terminal point of each of
his limbs, to symolise Crowley’s vision of the Venusian
influences on the card. Life and the hope granted by love.

It’s my favourite version of the card and it works well for

me with the mythology linked to the twelfth arcana.
Traditionally associated with Wotan/Odin, depending on
whether you’re more easterly of westerly in your Germanic
mythology. Odin’s story is that he hung himself from the
World Tree, while pierced by his own spear, to learn the
secret of power in nine worlds. This isn’t like Loki’s
perpetual ordeal -- a blind and purposeless retribution for
past misdemeanours -- but temporary suffering for a
specific gain. This is a common theme with dead and dying
gods throughout mythology.

The first Dying God Myth I came across is from my native

Wales, and for me it’s one of the ones that most closely
matches not just the ordeal of Odin, but the transformation
he undergoes after getting the power in the nine worlds.
Taliesin isn’t a god, he’s more a Mythical figure, but his
story still bears hearing. He starts life as Gwion Fach,
the child servant of the Enchantress Caeridwen. While
stirring a cauldron containing some concoction of her he
accidentally gains inhuman knowledge and wisdom. Deciding
she might well kill him he flees and the Sorceress pursues
intent on doing just that. A fantastic battle of
shapeshifting insues - very reminiscent of the one in
Disney’s King Arthur - until Gwion Fach exhaustedly turns
into a grain of corn, and Caeridwen eats him.

This doesn’t turn out to be the wisest move, since she then
becomes pregnant with a child she astutely guesses will be
none other than Gwion. She decides to kill the child, but
relents upon seeing it and instead throws it into the sea
where he is found by a passing Prince and everyone lives
happily ever after. After his symbolic death the child
Gwion, now become Taliesin, gains incredible powers of
expression. He is the supreme bard, capable of prophesying
through song and striking lesser poets insensible.

Of course there is another story where someone gets hung

from something with a spear wound in his side, and many of
us will probably have learned it at an early age -- but I’m
cautious to put it into the category of that hanged man.
This is the story of Christ. As I’ve mentioned before
Crowley hints at this with his talk of redemption and
sacrifice. It’s true that after the resurrection Christ
does change character -- his appearances are spare and when
he is present he shows great power. It pushes him from one
side of the balance to the other -- from man who is god to
god who is man. On the other hand it lacks the same
volition as Odin. We know that Christ is aware of his
destiny, but he does not so wilfully and physically put
himself in the sacrifice position as Odin.

The special thing about the Hanged Man for me is that apart
from the stories I’ve just mentioned there isn’t anything
else quite like him. Other Gods die and get back up again,
but they don’t get anything much out of it. Dionysos is
killed and brought back from the dead twice. The first time
is after an understandably jealous Hera tricks Semele into
killing herself by viewing Zeus in all his lightning
wreathed glory, and the second time where toddles off into
a trap laid by some Titans, and gets so badly mauled that
all Zeus can find afterwards is his heart. The thing is it
doesn’t get him anywhere, and it isn’t of his volition.
Both incidents take places when Dionysos is a very young
child. It’s quite similar with the Mesopotamian god Tammuz,
who either gets killed by Innana, or rescued by her
depending on which myth you believe. He gets resurrected,
or at least gets the promise of resurrection for six months
of the year. What good does it do him though? Odin got
ultimate power on Nine planes. Pretty good considering he
was already a God.

Some dead gods don’t even resurrect themselves. When Osiris

gets himself killed by the Typhon (possibly a form of his
brother Set, but also possibly a nasty thing that jumps on
him while he’s swimming around in the form of a fish) it’s
his wife Isis who gathers up all the pieces (well, almost
all the pieces) and puts him back together again. He gets
Kingship of the Underworld, but only because of the hard
work put in by his missus.

The Indian story of Sita is quite close to Odin, but

without the reward at the end. Sita is the wife of Rama,
who forsakes her family and comfort in order to live a life
of suffering and contemplation in the woods. She overcomes
hardships and lives piously until being kidnapped by the
evil god Ravana in revenge for cutting his sister’s nose
off. Sita, unsurprisingly doesn’t fall in love with Ravana,
or allow him to do anything with her (a very realistic
reaction to a man who’s just kidnapped you). Unfortunately
society demands that she goes through a fiery purification
ritual, which she passes with flying colours as the coals
turn to lotuses under her feet. AND? And nothing. She goes
back to being a stay at home wife. I find this last story
particularly frustrating because it’s so close to Odin’s
story, and because I can’t help thinking that she would
have gotten something better if she’d been one of the boys.

But that’s the thing about the Hanged Man -- it isn’t a

blind tale of death and resurrection, or even just death.
It’s Odin suspending himself from the world tree and coming
away with something he wanted. I’ve always tried not to
consider it one of the bad cards. For me the Hanged Man is
getting your head in the books when you want to go out,
it’s refusing something just because you don’t feel right
or aren’t ready yet. Letting the love of your life go
because you just don’t think it would work.

As Rachel Pollack says “the Hanged Man has surrendered to

the Rhythms of life… we hang ourselves from the world tree,
it’s roots beyond knowledge… it’s branches lost in the
endless stars.”