Tarot Card of the Week: The Hanged Man

This week the cards drew The Hanged Man.

Venus has been walking backwards since Saturday 3 October, and the deck has handed me the card of the pause. The chart and the cards, two languages, same soul.

Look at the image.

A young man hangs upside down by one foot from a living tree, a rough T shape of green wood. His other leg is bent behind him, so the legs make the shape of a 4.

His hands are behind his back.

And his face, which is the whole card, is calm.

There is a glow around his head.

Most people see this card and think, stuck, trapped, punished. The Hanged Man is the card of the willing pause. Look again, there is no rope on his hands and no one at the foot of the tree, so nobody is holding him there.

He has chosen to hang, and he has chosen to stay long enough for the world to look different from that angle.

That is the teaching.

There are things you cannot see the right way up. The relationship you are inside, the job you have done for ten years, the story you tell about your own family. From the ground, you see what you have always seen.

Turn it over, hang there a while, and the same thing looks completely different, and some of what you were sure of falls out of your pockets.

That is what a retrograde is for.

Venus has turned you upside down over what you love, and she will keep you there for six weeks. The Hanged Man says, stop struggling against it.

Let the blood run to your head.

Let the thing you were certain about look strange.

And notice the glow.

The light around his head comes from the position.

Now the shadow, because every card has one. The Hanged Man gone wrong is the person who hangs there for years and calls it patience.

The pause is meant to end.

Venus goes direct in mid November, and by then the point of the hanging is that you climb down and act on what you saw.

So the practice for this week.

Pick one thing you are certain about in a relationship, a job or a family story.

Turn it upside down on purpose, and ask how it looks from the other person’s end.

Hang there a few days.

Then, and only then, decide.

And a note for this afternoon, Thursday 8 October: at 2:29 Perth time the Rooster month ends and the Month of the Dog begins, and I will write about the Dog on Tuesday.

What have you been seeing the right way up for too long?

There is more teaching like this in The Library, and every daily post is in Daily Posts. If you would like guidance on your own path, see Readings.