Hanging out in Pisces

The Hanged Man Card

Once again, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share an excerpt from a manuscript I am working on about the relationship between Tarot, The Zodiac and the Wheel of the Year. This is from the Pisces chapter and deals with Neptune and The Hanged Man card. Hope you find it interesting.

…

We should not ignore the role that the “Modern co-ruler” of Pisces plays in understanding the way we experience the dream land of Pisces. Neptune, and his corresponding Major Arcana card The Hanged Man, gives us insight into how Jupiter makes mystics and/or drunkards of all who enter here. Pisces is associated with “self sacrificial Gods”. Dionysius, Osirus, Jesus and Odin, save the world by sacrificing life and limb. Oden is of particular interest in association with the Hanged Man. According to the myth, Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil (the tree that connects the underworld, world of the Gods and our own plane) to gain a salvific vision. This vision was The Runes which allowed the transmission of information over time and distance and, as a means of divination, made clear the ways of Gods to mortals. He gave an eye in sacrifice to Mimir, guardian of the well of wisdom at the base of the tree. To gain a vision of eternity, we must sacrifice something temporal, to remain there, we must die. This is the meaning of Gods who die and resurrect.

Along with martyrs, monks, hermits and other renunciates, we should remember those lost to mental illness, drugs and other vices. They too trade the common pleasures of life, family, friends and worldly comforts, to follow a vision “beyond the world”. Pisces is, after all, the home of drunks and madmen as much as prophets and holy men. The closer we get to the deathless Gods, the closer we must get to death itself. If we choose to remain in Heaven (or Hell), we cannot remain on Earth. The bodhisattva renounces the peace of eternity in order to save all sentient beings from the ignorance of eternity, the drug addict sacrifices his or her life to the vision of bliss beyond this mortal coil. Pisces does not judge them, knows and loves them both.

In readings, The Hanged Man represents a moment where we become “hung up”. Sometimes this is by design, a meditation retreat, a season of reflection. Sometimes by “accident”, in ignorance or folly we follow something or someone into a wilderness from which we cannot escape. But even in the latter case, the answer is to gain a “vision”, an insight that will allow us a broader understanding of the world and out place in it. In astrology, Neptune rules over dreams and visions so powerful that they compel us to act. Not ALL of these dreams can, or even should bare the light of day which dawns in the following sign (Ares). Those that can or will not, will reveal the dreamers as fools or worse, some will make heroes. The Gods have their own ideas about which is which and who is who, and so do we. Neptune doesn’t care what either we or the other Gods think of the dreams he brings to human kind, he only cares that we follow that dream. To follow it though, we must wake up, make it real, for better or for worse.