The Hanged Man

When life isn't going anywhere fast.

Have you ever tried to push a bolder up Mount Kilimanjaro?

Me neither.

The Hanged Man is a tarot card, marked XII in the so-called Major Arcana (if you like getting technical).

When the Hanged Man shows up in a reading, the person you are reading for is usually in some sort of holding pattern. Life—it just AIN’T moving.

But hold on there, just one minute!…

Aren’t I supposed to be MAKING life happen? Are you telling me I’m not “manifesting” hard enough? Tell me… I can take it… Is my secret, sacred star name… “Procrastination”?!!

Nope.

Apparently not.

Apparently—according to The Hanged Man—sometimes in life, you can “manifest” all day long if you’d like. You can even stay up ridiculously late and bark at the moon. Or chant at it. Or whatever else you do at the feet of it—naked.

And it WON’T change a thing.

Off-putting, right?

I know. 

Believe me. I know.

These days, I tend to tell the person I am reading for something to the effect:

“It’s like you are on a quiet country road. And there’s this gentle breeze. And you, you’re just hanging there. From a tree. Upside down by one foot. The road ahead?... it continues. You can see it. In fact, it might even be splitting—into two roads. But it doesn’t matter what you do. Or how hard you try. You just CAN’T get down from that tree. And the road(s)? It’s waiting for you. But for now—you’ll just have to wait.” 

The message of The Hanged Man is when nothing seems to work, when you are trying really hard to get things going, but they won’t budge... don’t bother. Don’t waste your energy.

And perhaps the harder lesson:

Life has a rhythm. And because of this, you don’t always get to dictate when and how things happen. And if you are wise—you stop pushing.   

You surrender to the rhythm of life itself.

And you don’t beat yourself up about it.

The Hanged Man card has a curious halo—or corona (at least in some decks)—bursting out from behind the man’s head. The halo: the symbol of enlightenment, of a spiritual nature, of divine wisdom.

Perhaps the man, by the very fact that he has realized that life indeed has a rhythm and that, at the moment, that rhythm says “nothing budges,”—maybe he has EARNED his crown of light.

Instead of wasting his energy fighting life’s current resting pace, the man surrenders. He got the memo.

He is living fully, knowing that PANIC & PUSH is not the song of the day.