Deck: Tarot Illuminati by Erik C. Dunne
If you've ever had a relationship situation that won't resolve, a decision you can't seem to get clear about, a state of mind that doesn't shift, or a job search that keeps stalling…
You know the feeling.
If any of that sounds familiar, you've already met The Hanged Man.
In tarot, The Hanged Man shows up when life puts something on hold. The important thing to recognize is that when The Hanged Man shows up, no amount of forcing things to move will work.
It can also be much less dramatic in scale (tarot cards have degrees of intensity). Perhaps you were messaging someone back and forth about a business transaction but some kind of technical glitch interrupted the process and you had to wait for a resolution.
As well as being used for prediction and divination, tarot cards are spiritual exercises. And The Hanged Man is one of the more challenging ones as it is an initiation of sorts.
We’ve been taught to work hard and push and from that, good results will happen. This is true, but also limited. I’m sure you can recall times where you’ve had good intentions and worked diligently but your desired outcome eluded you no matter how hard you pushed.
The Hanged Man comes to show you another truth. Rather than your usual horizontal focus ( do this and I get that), this card is about surrender.
Isn't Surrender Giving Up?
Surrender is a loaded word, so let me say what I actually mean by it.
Surrender is an acknowledgement that there is an Intelligence at work in your life. This doesn’t mean you don’t have agency. It just means that ego might need to be reminded to get back to riding shotgun so that this Intelligence can take back the wheel.
If you look at the image of The Hanged Man below, you’ll see the vertical positioning of the character as well as the prayer hands behind his back. There’s a halo effect around his head along with a look of peaceful calm on his face.
One important note is the difference between the older card on the left (pic of TDM) and the more modern one on the right (RWS). The one on the right is the famed Rider-Waite-Smith version with the artwork painted by Pamela Colman Smith. She added the halo to The Hanged Man where it wasn’t there before, displaying the deeper insight that surrender is a dynamic process done willingly.
This isn’t easy when your plans suddenly go awry or your life suddenly begins feeling hollow. Your first reaction is to fight and to try to fix things or change them somehow. But The Hanged Man will not budge until his lesson ripens within you. Fighting your situation can be like fighting quicksand and best case will exhaust you (which might inspire voluntary surrender), and worst case, make things even more stuck.
The way I often see the imagery is like a pendulum: it doesn't need to be stopped. It just naturally swings itself out until it's still. The quicker you see that fighting what’s happening isn’t helping, the sooner you get to stillness. The sooner you reach stillness, the sooner things start to move although often in a different direction than you had imagined before this lesson showed up in your life.
Caveat One: you can’t force stillness, either. That’s continuing the same movement as fighting it. Stillness can only be allowed.
Caveat Two: It’s ok to have an agenda. It’s ok to want things to be different. Allow those feelings to be without judgement, is all.
The Hanged Man tarot card left to right: CBD Tarot de Marseilles by Yoav Ben-Dov and Rider-Waite-Smith deck published by US Games.
Surrender is not apathy: If you had the idea that surrender meant to curl up in a ball in the corner and give up, that’s not it. It can, however, in some cases mean waving a white flag.
This is especially true in relationship situations whether intimate or otherwise. Many disagreements can be de-fused by dropping your need to be right (even if you are). This allows the stalled energy to start flowing again. But maybe you’ve already done that. That is actually a closer meeting with The Hanged Man.
When you have tried everything to get something to change or move and it doesn’t, there are two basic outcomes. You can harden and get cynical or bitter. Or, if you stay with it, something in you can open (only when it’s ready and not before) and experience the Holiness and sacredness within you and around you.
I call this the vertical movement as opposed to the usual horizontal movement of trying to get somewhere. And the image in The Hanged Man tarot card displays this idea of the vertical perfectly.
There’s also a third way in: that is, you push and force and push and force and exhaust yourself. You’re too tired to even care anymore. You don’t have the energy to put up a wall against life and become cynical. The vertical shines through the cracks.
A caveat: using spiritual ideas to avoid the real work of daily life is its own trap. Although in more intense inner experiences real time is needed to digest the new understanding, the genuine vertical doesn't ask you to escape your responsibilities. It asks you to meet them differently.
The God Who Sacrificed Himself to Himself
The Hanged Man isn’t something that only you and I experience. In Nordic myth, the highest god in their pantheon, Odin, personifies what The Hanged Man depicts when he hangs for nine nights from the world tree.
Odin was a restless seeker and had a deep thirst for absolute cosmic wisdom. He already ruled the world, the horizontal chain of cause-effect and time. But he wanted to understand the hidden, magical fabric of Reality itself. In Norse and Viking culture this was represented by the runes.
Runes are an ancient alphabet, related in spirit to Sanskrit or Egyptian hieroglyphs. In Nordic culture, they were used for practical writing, but also carried symbolic weight, believed to hold power tied to cosmic law and daily life.
But like anything else, ultimate truth isn’t free. There’s a price to pay.
In order to capture the runes, Odin underwent an incredible nine day ritual. He commanded all the other gods to not bring him any food or water. He then drove his own spear into his side and suspended himself upside down from a branch of Yggdrasil, the great World Tree.
In the ancient Norse poem Hávamál, this agonizing trial is described through a brilliant paradox: Odin was "sacrificed himself to himself. Because he was already the supreme deity, there was no higher authority to grant him enlightenment. The transaction had to happen entirely within his own being. Odin was essentially showing how to sacrifice the illusion of ego to the immortal universal Light within him.
Note: this move does not annihilate ego. It’s a realization that ego is not the real dynamic stream of life that you are.
For nine nights, suspended in total isolation over the abyss, Odin experienced a complete psychological death. He surrendered all control, all action, and all identity. Only when he had reached the absolute end of his physical endurance did the universe yield its secrets. Peering down into the darkness, the shapes of the runes finally revealed themselves. He claimed them, fell from the tree, and was reborn.
For you and me, once we go through our own ordeal of waiting and deepening on our own tree and the movement begins, it can feel like being reborn. Often, what we thought we wanted looks different as we see it with new eyes.
Being Holy and Paying Bills
You probably understand that different people have different strengths. I believe there's a reason for this, though that's not what I'm here to convince you of
You’ve seen the “enlightened being” who lives as a hermit with an extremely simple lifestyle. No emails, texts, bills, kids or difficult bosses to deal with. These people are great examples of the vertical but without much horizontal.
Eckhart Tolle tells a story of a monk who was meditating high up in the mountains for months. He was experiencing bliss and peace and no one to disturb him. One day someone came to him and told him he was wanted at the passport office of the country he was in. He went to the office and of course, it was extremely busy and crowded. He apparently lost his cool and started to shout and yell out of frustration at what was happening.
That said, I believe there are people who have reached a wonderful intensification of “higher consciousness” and live that simple life but are here as a kind of anchor for the collective.
On the other hand, there are people who are super successful in the eyes of the world but quite possibly feel something is missing in their lives. You can probably think of some examples of that. People have fallen from high places. No judgement. In this case, that’s a horizontal orientation without much if any vertical.
For most of us, we’re here to activate life on both the vertical and horizontal planes. Life happens where they meet.
The Hanged Man arrives when our vertical understanding needs to deepen so the whole of us, spiritual and human, can grow. We get to anchor the vertical in the midst of our busy lives. No need to go anywhere.
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The Reluctant Mystic
There’s a saint in the Catholic Christian tradition named St. Teresa. She was very busy in the active life of the church as an administrator, managing budgets and dealing with church politics. One of her well known quotes is, “God walks among the pots and pans” meaning spiritual life isn’t separate from ordinary daily life.
She also had an intense internal, mystical life akin to the lesson of The Hanged Man. In one of her books, she describes what she calls rapture where a power suddenly took over her senses and body. She would resist it as she was at first terrified. However, no matter what she did, she could not do so. She couldn’t even physically move and felt as if even her physical body was being lifted off the ground.
She was also afraid it might happen publicly and would ask her nuns to hold her down on the ground.
The main thing she mentions is that once her fear was released and she surrendered to this power, she felt an overwhelming bliss and sweetness that lasted for a while afterwards and renewed her with vigour and energy to accomplish her tasks.
This was a woman who was renowned for her intelligence, wit and practicality. This wasn't the naivety of someone easily swept away or fooled by their own mind. She was doing her best to tell the truth about her experiences despite herself.
Perhaps you’ve had some experiences that have left you wondering about what happened or even added new colours to your usual way of looking at the world. Often these experiences get “lost in the junk drawer” as we get on with life. It can be useful to write them down or at least acknowledge them to yourself without making them into either a mountain or a molehill.
Not Just Saints and Gods
In my own life I’ve had many such disruptions by The Hanged Man and the vertical breaking through. In a practical sense, many things I’ve been working toward or wanted to work out a certain way were suddenly put on hold.
Even when you work for yourself as I do, there are rhythms of the tides coming in and tides going out. During those times of slower activity, you can question yourself and what you’re doing. Doubts creep in. But by aligning with The Hanged Man’s message and staying present with the uncertainty of the paused energy, a deepened understanding bears fruit.
It’s perhaps not as dramatic as being lifted off the ground (although I have had some more dramatic “unveilings” of Reality) but a subtle radiant, warm glow in the heart is felt. Sometimes it lingers for the entire day and even several days although it gets more subtle.
Of course, then your stalled situation starts to move again and you forget everything vertical and begin scrambling like everyone else to keep up with the turning of the world again. Fortunately, despite the busy life, the experience stays with you even in the background. It even seems as if there’s a pathway for the vertical being walked on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s more intense and “special,” sometimes it’s almost quite ordinary and amongst the pots and pans.
Even Prayer Can Be Ego
There are many “hacks” and methods around these days to improve yourself (link to trap article). There’s nothing wrong with some self-improvement. Sure, there’s a rare saint here and there as well as people who are cruel and apparently guilt free about it. But the majority of people on this planet probably feel that they could be somewhat better human beings.
Back to the methods of self-improvement which even include prayer, meditation and mindfulness. Yes, I just said that. The ego is so sneaky and we’re so identified with its thought patterns. They live in our head, after all. It can use techniques like prayer and meditation to become “better” than others. Some call this spiritual pride.
The Hanged Man comes to say that the surrender itself is the work.
If you pray for something and feel like you are gripping on to that outcome tightly, that’s not actual prayer. If you meditate as a way to develop “powers” or special abilities other than finding the space that surrounds all thoughts, feelings and sensations, you’ve taken the surrender away from the meditation. You may as well watch television. Practices such as this can still be somewhat beneficial (perhaps in the beginning), but they won’t take you to a more unshakeable ground. It won’t eliminate the root of fear.
This is where grace comes in. The dynamic surrender creates space for grace to enter. Grace is an entirely different dimension altogether and always present. But it can only enter that which is empty. Without grace, it’s all a game played by ego and can go unnoticed quite easily.
This is where some kind of intention can be helpful as a reminder. Not as another thing to achieve, but as a reminder of where attention already wants to flow. Thy will not mine be done. Or, attuning to the feeling of compassion for another. Or affirming that you are surrendering the outcome to grace. These are all ways of working with The Hanged Man although of course, you don’t need to label it as such. But the Tarot neatly names and organizes these profound spiritual exercises into precise patterns making it easier to recognize.
The goal was never to abandon the world. It’s to not get lost or trapped in it.
The Universe Knowing Itself Through You
Consider that you or anything in this world does not exist as an entirely isolated fragment or event.
Everything is connected to everything else in some way. It’s even been shown that the cells in your body completely change every seven years or so. Think of the music you like, the clothes you wear, the language you speak, the thoughts you have. All of it borrowed from what was already here when you apparently arrived.
This means that nothing has a beginning to its existence because all the cells and material were already here and have been here for a very long time. Even the Intelligence that organizes those cells into various organs in your body or any other forms such as a beloved furry friend like a cat, already existed. No beginning to any individual or any inner or outer event can be found.
Try this exploration: can you find where this moment ends and the next one begins? Or, when does cold water change to hot? Different people will have different answers to that. There’s no hard and fast line. Everything flows into everything else.
The part contains the whole. You are the universe expressing as an individual.
The mind blowing part of all of this is that despite the ever changing nature of the forces that make you you, there is Something incredible behind all of this. This is because this constant flow of forces and changing forms (I believe even across lifetimes), the continuity and organic unity is somehow retained.
This Intelligence is what you surrender to when you meet The Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is a symbol but it is alive and it is a verb. A movement which may even require “non-action” at times.
Tarot shows you what’s unfolding and Presence Sessions show you how to meet it.