Tarot del Fuego - The Hanged Man - 12

Originally, the Hanged Man was associated only with the Element of Water. The modern planetary correspondence attributed to it is Neptune, named after the Greek god of the ocean. Either would explain the Hanged Man's scaly Aquaman pants. The Hebrew letter attributed to the card is mem, which literally means "seas," but is understood to mean "water," more generically. The significance of the Hanged Man's inversion, in conjunction with his association with water, is that it is meant to imply that he is a reflection of the archetypes which have come before him in the same way that a person's reflection appears to be upside down, relative to them, when they're standing over a pool. The previous card (Strength in this deck) was the last of the five kañcukas, placing this Principle at a lower level in the hierarchy of manifestation, and making it the first of the Principles that are regarded as belonging to the physical world. What is being implied, then, is that the sphere of Matter is a reflection of the worlds above it. Consciousness here, more enshrouded in conditioning than in any Principle that has come before this point, has shifted its perspective concretely, in a very fundamental way. Attention is now officially more fixed in the direction of diversity than it is the Unity that underlies it.

The Hanged Man is always depicted hanging from a living branch. This is a throwback to Odin hanging himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, the Axis Mundi connecting all of the nine worlds of Norse lore. As the "Allfather" of the Norse pantheon, Odin corresponds to the Fool in our system. His self-sacrifice occurring at this level of the hierarchy of Manifestation is a nod to the fact that Consciousness must, (at least apparently) sacrifice much of its power and freedom to simply know itself and have the opportunity to experience anything at all. This is symbolized by the fact that he is bound and blinded by a hood over his head.

Self sacrifice is a stereotypical character trait attributed to natives of the constellation of Pisces, which is ruled by Neptune, whether in the form of genuine altruism or a martyr complex. As a Pisces who is also an astrologer and who knows a lot of other natives of the sign, I happen to think that that correlation is more played up than it deserves to be, but it is a Pisces/Neptune theme nonetheless.

Like the Emperor, the Hanged Man has a tattoo of a face on his torso. The Hanged Man and the Emperor have a mathematical correspondence as well, since 12 (the Hanged Man's number) is divisible by 4 (the Emperor's number). The Hanged Man's body is contorted into the shape of the number four as well. Neptune is a planet that confers intuition and psychic ability. We could take the fact that the Hanged Man's face is on his stomach instead of his head to be informing us that the seat of his awareness is there more than in his head. To have a "gut feeling" about something is to have an intuition.

The bat in the upper right hand corner of the picture reiterates the Hanged Man's inversion and suspension. As symbols, bats are said to represent initiations and transformation. The bat also seems to have a storm cloud around him, or as a part of him. It is dumping rain and shooting bolts of lightning. Following the direction implied by the falling of the rain, we see a dove below, who is also loosing a bolt of lightning. In the middle left position of the card, there is another dove shooting lightning from its breast and radiating yods upward. Above him is yet another dove. This one is appears to be being propelled upward by a large flame. This whole series of images implies a circular motion similar to that of the Wheel of Fortune, which we have associated with the cycle of alternating Involution and Evolution. Except the ordinarily counter-clockwise motion characteristic of the way the symbol is traditionally depicted, here, is reversed. Now, the implicit circular motion is rotating in a clockwise direction. It may be worth noting that if you look at a spinning object from the top, its apparent direction of movement will be the opposite of its apparent direction of movement when viewed from underneath. If it is spinning counter-clockwise when viewed from the top down, it will appear to be spinning clockwise when viewed from the bottom up.

The bat, the three doves, and the Hanged Man's head all have fire, lightning, rain, clouds, and/or yods radiating from them. These represent thermal, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and spiritual power. The preceding five Principles, the kañchukas, are powers of the divine. So these five elements of the Hanged Man card call to mind these five shells that encapsulate the Hanged Man himself. The doves, taken on their own, also symbolize the Divine power of Grace, anugraha. Grace is regarded by the Tantrik tradition as a sort of  force that pulls awareness back inward, toward the perception of Unity, from the exclusive perception of separation and duality, which is the root cause of all suffering. Grace is a force that reorients one's perspective in such a way that the witness-consciousness that underlies the kañchukas comes into greater focus. Where the embodied condition's default setting is to be completely wrapped up in identification with said kañchukas, Grace confers the ability to perceive the vast space between them once again.

In the model of the Principles of Manifestation presented by Nondual Shaiva Tantra, this 12th Principle is called Purusha. In some Yogic schools of thought, like that of the Saṃkhya tradition and that put forth by Patañjali in his Yogasutrā. They referred to their highest Principle by this label. They conceived of it as identical across individuals and multitudinous in nature. Naturally, the Tantrikas asked, "Then what is it that encompasses all of those individual Purushas?" So in the Tantrik model, Purusha is an individual unit of Consciousness. It is the core of the individual. It is the equivalent of what most people are at least vaguely conceptualizing when they talk about the soul. It is also called the jīva or the ātman, among other things. It is witness-consciousness, which is qualitatively not different from Consciousness-Absolute (the Fool), but peering out from behind the 5 shells of Shiva's limited powers, it is necessarily finite by merit of this association. Or at least it appears to be. In describing this concept in his Tantra Illuminated, Christopher Wallis interestingly, and I suspect unwittingly, likens it to an individual drop within the ocean. While the fully enlightened individual knows there to be no difference between his innermost Self, the Self of all, and Consciousness-absolute, he or she will continue operating as an individual. Purusha and the kañchukas remain in effect. The difference is simply that the witness-consciousness shifts into a mode of awareness where it's obvious that it is not ever actually touched by the activities of anything external to it. It remains unstained by desire and passion. It remains unmoving and unmoved in the midst of all activities. When no difference is seen to be real or binding, and everything is understood from deep within one's bones to be nothing other than the Play of Consciousness, that Purusha will cease to be associated with the embodied condition and merge into the Absolute entirely. The jīva merges fully with Shiva and the previously ceaseless rounds of birth and rebirth come to an end. In the meantime, however, this Principle is considered a part of the physical plane of Manifestation by merit of its association with the various shells which characterize Consciousness in its contracted form, and their interaction with the phenomenal world below.