January 12, 2022: The Hanged Man and The Moon

Looks like my Moon card is turning into a stalker!  We've seen both of these cards before but let's look at the images again.

The image on the True Black Hanged Man shows a man with legs suspended in the air and his face and shoulders resting in a field of mature golden grasses or grains.  He is slowly disintegrating or decomposing, with golden liquid dripping from his lips that is pooling below his head and soaking into the ground below him.  A cloud of white butterflies surround his feet.  Behind his feet is a hologram, a schematic view of the city of Teotihuacan, an Aztec city considered to be the birthplace of the 5th sun.  The keywords for this card are surrender, faith, sacrifice, and perspective.  

We just saw The Moon yesterday.  The image on this card shows a large crescent Moon acting like a conduit for a strong flow of water that is pouring from the conduit.  Below and in front of the flowing water is a woman, seated with her left leg crossed over her right and lit dramatically from above.  One hand holds back her long hair so she can gaze downward unimpeded and the other hand reaches down toward a glass bowl on a three-legged stand at her feet.  The glass bowl contains still water in which we can see a reflection of her hand.  Above the large crescent moon is a large hand ominously gesturing over the whole image.  The keywords for this card are intuition, psychic, fear, and illusion.

Yesterday we talked about illusion and the vantage point of perception, and how that vantage point can affect our understanding of a situation.  What better way to change our vantage point than to view things upside down?  I did a little reading about The Hanged Man, and found that an alternate name for him is The Observer.  We learn through even a brief check into the correspondences of this card that The Hanged Man gains knowledge and wisdom through trials and sacrifice, but it takes a bit of thinking to realize that he accomplishes this goal through the enhanced perception he attains by changing his vantage point.  

Both of these cards are associated with the element of Water.  We have learned that Water is the cold that binds and the wet that adapts; it is considered passive and thus it adapts to its environment, focuses energies inward, and is indirect and reactive.  Isn't it interesting that The Hanged Man can effectively use the power of surrender as an action?