The resulting bliss of all five senses simultaneously coming to life is the same as organismic release; the only difference is that in infatuation this blissfulness is projected onto the other person. We erroneously believe that the source of our feeling resides in the other person, whereas it actually resides in our expanded field of perception. The infatuation process follows a definite trajectory, beginning with a momentary healing of the rift between one's body and mind (due to the global activation of the senses) and ending with a healing of the rift between oneself and the environment; an environment in which we now see our beloved everywhere.
There's only one way to avoid the hangover associated with organismic release, and that's to allow organismic repose. Organismic repose is as the valley to the peak of a mountain. Whenever you experience a peak in anything you shouldn’t be averse to experiencing its decline; rather, you should relax into it. In other words, you should have just as much respect for peace as you do for stimulation. You should appreciate, not just the mountaintop, but also the path you took to get there. You should appreciate not only the view of the peak from the valley but also the valley itself. A peak-experience becomes a hangover if you avoid the inevitable ending of that peak-experience. If you can enjoy your energy fully, which means enjoying not only the waves but the calm depths also, then you can avoid the withdrawals and experience instead the joys of a bodymind at peace.
The Hanged Man:
The Spirit of the Mighty Waters
Trump #12
Elemental Trump of Water
Path: #23 (Geburah to Hod)
Letter: Mem (water) (Numerical value: 40)
*(To this trump, as well as to The Empress, can be attributed the entire suit of Cups. Both cards equally represent this magickal weapon, just in different ways.)
Helpful Quotes: (parenthesis mine)
"Let not the water whereon thou journeyest wet thee!
And, being come to shore, plant thou the Vine and rejoice without shame."
-Aleister Crowley
"The great problems of life are never solved forever. If they appear to be for once, then it is always a loss. The sense and purpose does not lie in their solution, but rather in the fact that we incessantly work on them. This alone preserves us from stupefaction and fossilization."
-Carl Jung
Contemplation
The Zen master, Bokuju, used to be fond of telling his disciples, "Go and cross the stream, but don't allow the water to touch your feet." Many would try, but of course their feet got wet. Then, one day, a disciple said to Bokuju, "You ask the impossible of us. If there were a bridge, of course we could cross the stream; but there isn’t any bridge.” Bokuju answered the monk, "I bet you that I can cross without getting wet!" Of course, when Bokuju tried to cross the stream, water touched his feet. So the monks said, "Look, master! The water touched you!" Bokuju replied, "Wrong! The water has only touched my body, but it hasn’t touched my consciousness.”
That our poor friend, The Hanged Man, has allowed himself to get wet is fairly obvious! But this Zen story tells us how to fix this situation, for once you identify with consciousness rather than form, you’re free! In Tarot, this consciousness has a name:
Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for The Priestess of the Silver Star!
The reader will note the color scheme shared by these two trumps, The Hanged Man and The Priestess. It’s the color of water. The Hanged Man represents the element of Water below the Abyss, whereas The Priestess represents elemental Water above it. Here, “water” symbolizes the reflective quality of consciousness. The waters above the Abyss are calm and clear, while the waters below are polluted, disturbed, or frozen. This distinction will serve to demarcate the "light" and "shadow" aspects of The Hanged Man.
The tiny boxes to which The Hanged Man is nailed (elemental squares) symbolize the vain attempt to compartmentalize the universe. Imagine cramming for a college exam. You can try to store as much information as you can into your brain cells, where it sits until it's needed; but this binds up a great deal of energy and space.
The Hanged Man reminds us that we’re too close to the project and it's time to step back for a moment. This "step back" is exactly what The Priestess represents. The Priestess is clarity. The process of acquiring these fresh eyes is found in the seventeenth trump, The Star, which is simply The Priestess unveiled.
Astrologically, The Star is associated with Saturn (rules) and Neptune (exalted), and many have associated The Hanged Man with the Lord of the Mighty Waters (Neptune) himself. Neptune is the Lord of creative ecstasy, and he's also associated with the ocean. The Priestess is associated with the moon, and it's the moon that influences the ocean tides. Therefore, it's this passive state of awareness (moon) that draws like waves, from the depths of your being, the insights that free you from immobilization.
Lady Freida Harris, in a letter to Crowley, says: (parenthesis mine)
"We will finish (creating this deck) like Alice through the looking glass by having the whole pack on our heads. Goodnight."
Crowley responds to Harris with:
"I have long foreseen the 'Alice in Wonderland' conclusion of our labours, but that if you remember was the signal for the awakening to the beauty of life."
This problem of "having the whole pack on our heads" is exactly what The Hanged Man represents. The advice here is to let go and let God, as the saying goes. The Star is this let-go—the bridge between the state of conflict (The Hanged Man) and the state of clarity (The Priestess). The Star reminds us that the very act of letting go is "the signal for the awakening to the beauty of life." *(The Universe—"signal for the redintegration by Spirit.")
The Hanged Man also embodies the path of conscious suffering. This isn't a recommended path for those who prefer to play the victim, as such people may actually become more egoistic through it. Such persons are the embodiment of what Nietzsche called “Slave Morality”, and what Crowley called “Old Aeon” mentality.
The virtue of conscious suffering is laid bare in the event that it teaches its adherent how not to suffer. This is what separates the conscious suffering of The Hanged Man from the aimless suffering of The Fool. This is very subtle, as you can’t simply adopt this path as a means to an end. The only thing required of the aspirant is full awareness and trust. This trust should be present from the very beginning or else there'll be difficulty on the path of conscious suffering.
The flowering of the path of conscious suffering is the appearance of devotion. All things suffered in love are felt to be worth it for they reveal to you the depths to which you can be touched. If you can feel pain at such a deep level, then you can also be that deeply devoted. After all, you can sing a song in two ways. One is from the throat, which will sound very hollow. The other is from the belly, which will sound very full and powerful. Similarly, you can love from only the mind or body or you can love from the very depths of your soul.
You can love life and death in the same two ways.
You can live only for pleasure, from a very small portion of your being, or you can accept both pain and pleasure as messengers of the divine. You can pray for security, or you can ask for those experiences that hold the lessons necessary for your growth. To exist, worship, and love from the highest peak of your growth is the only way to worship or pray. Your totality is the only offering worthy of the Beloved.
Sometimes life is very harsh and delivers painful experiences to you. As a traveler on the path of conscious suffering you'd ask, "What’s the deeper meaning of this painful ordeal?" Or, "How am I to make creative use of this suffering?" Then there are times when life sends you so much joy that it actually becomes painful! The path of conscious suffering unravels all paradoxes. (See the Appendix for attached essay, “Teatime in the Garden of Gethsemane”)
The Hanged Man, when he appears in a reading, commonly refers to a situation in which The Chariot has come to a standstill. The fact that his left foot is tied to an ankh suggests that all too often su
ch dilemmas occur unconsciously. We stumble blindly into situations in which history repeats itself, or else we find that no matter how hard we try we can't seem to bring our goals to fruition. We can illustrate this process Kabbalistically as follows:
NOTE: (The left foot, like the left hand, is associated with the activation of the right, image-producing hemisphere of the brain. The language of symbol is also the language which the subconscious mind uses to articulate messages from the unconscious to the conscious self. See my book, “Behind The Veil: The Complete Guide to Conscious Sleep”, for a full discussion of this topic.)
The Hanged Man occupies the path of Mem---connecting the fifth sephira, Geburah, to the eighth sephira, Hod, on the Tree of Life. Running parallel to this path, on the Pillar of Mercy, is the path of Kaph---connecting the fourth sephira, Chesed, to the seventh sephira, Netzach: the path of the tenth trump, Fortune, the card of individual destiny. Now Mem, translated from the Hebrew, means, "water," and refers here to depth and blood. That the waters of The Hanged Man have become stagnant is glaringly obvious and it seems, if we're to improve his spiritual vascularity, we must spill his blood, so to speak. This isn't a question of spiritual homicide but of transfusion, self-sacrifice, and osmosis. Consider the crucifixion of Christ, and all that it represents. Jesus didn't become Christ until he stopped leaning to his own understanding and accepted the formula of his own rebirth. He then gladly picked up his cross.
The Hanged Man is torn between thought (Hod) and action (Geburah) and is giving more energy to the former than to latter. This is the typical response to having tried the opposite and failing to see any results. Sometimes we fuel our actions without thinking them through. We may be so desperate (desire/Netzach) to reach our goals that we lose all sense of proportion; we forget the value of prudence. Sometimes the converse is true, and we fail to act at all, spending most of our time planning and waiting for the “perfect” moment. The train passes us by and we take our place among the dreamers of the world.
Thought is the blood of the mind, and we must poor it into the much larger vein of action if we’re to feed the beating heart of destiny. Action is the blood of life; we must poor no less than our all into it if we wish to be fully alive. Action for actions' sake isn’t enough. There must be right action for it to have any value. It must be in harmony with the sum total of who you are and not a single note should be off key. Just as thought is the blood of the mind, and action is the blood of life, so too is desire the blood of the ego. By desire I don't mean longing; they're qualitatively different. Longing is from the totality of your being. Desire, on the other hand, is local. Longing will continue regardless what you're doing to distract yourself from it. Desire is fleeting. Longing is the river that runs between the two Pillars of Mercy and Severity, and it's also the waters between the shores of thought and action. Desire is a little stream, whereas longing is like a river flowing toward the ocean.
Says Kahlil Gibran:
"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
It often happens, when we can't feel the closeness of that for which we long, we substitute by feeding desire. For instance, you may long to be a painter but lack the time to develop your skills. You may have a family, a demanding job, and so forth. Furthermore, you may not have hands at all! You may have been injured somehow. You may have at one time been a marvelous painter only to have your hands amputated, so you substitute by becoming an alcoholic, a sex addict, or what have you. The feeding of desire temporarily alleviates the acute suffering that accompanies the feeling of having been separated from the source of happiness. It's like opium. As is marvelously indicated by the Wheel of Time in the Fortune card, this can become a dreadful habit. Sometimes nature is apparently cruel, and there are times when you quite simply must sacrifice your one true love. It's this feeling of hopelessness that occupies one end of the bigger picture of The Hanged Man. The other end of this bigger picture is desire. Greater is the possibility of redemption in hopelessness than in desire because in hopelessness there's no movement of the ego. In fact, there's no possibility of redemption through desire because you're continuously falling down. In hopelessness even longing disappears:
Hopelessness is longing dropped.
This doesn't mean that if longing is dropped desire is dropped also. Desire can exist without longing. Indeed, one may actually desire longing! For example, in intense love there is great desire, but there's also great longing. When in deep sexual orgasm, in deep desire, there's a powerful urge to melt into the other person. This is the arising of longing. But as most of us know, lovers rarely stick together! And it's usually the most passionate relationships that end most abruptly. Suffice it to say that this ecstatic experience leaves its mark on the mind, and one can go on for lifetimes chasing it. But if you’re aware, you’ll notice that it's not so much the desire you’re hungry for, but the longing that it produces. That moment of dissolution can become quite addictive, but you can't reproduce it at will. Desire, on the other hand, is in your power to transcend. Desire is very greedy. It occurs when the ego takes hold of longing and tries to make it secure. Longing is very altruistic; it arises when the ego is willing and eager to be surrendered.
So the entire movement, when placed on the Tree of Life, is as follows:
From the often-complacent seat of Chesed there's a desire for change. This is much like the hero's call to adventure, if not exactly that, which we encountered in The Chariot. There’s a movement, a tremor of sorts, vibrating between Chesed and Netzach (the path of Kaph). One wishes to alleviate boredom, to whatever degree. This desire creates its own momentum, its own energy, creating tension between Netzach and Geburah. This tension creates a sort of lightening flash, as it were, between these two Sephiroth. This energy can be spent either in thought or in action. In the situation of The Hanged Man, either course of action leads to stalemate, as we've seen. So to bridge the gap between the two Pillars effectively there are two options available, and desire isn’t one of them:
1. Shift your focus to the path of Gimel (The Priestess)
2. Shift your focus to the path of Tau (The Universe), which is really a movement of The Chariot to the third Sephira, Binah---the Will to Understand.
In the first option, you're allowing yourself to see things from a different perspective. In the second, you're suspending perspective itself. Perspective is one way to understand, to see things from a different point of view; but to surrender your perspective entirely is to wait for the arrival of insight, is to leave yourself in unseen hands. In the first option, you have a decision to make. In the second, the decision comes of its own accord.
One of the most characteristic traits of man is his ability to create problems. Human beings revel in problems! If there's no problem to solve then man feels bored. Mankind has become entirely dependent upon reason. Reason has its place, but to make of it the sole rule of life is to make life insipid. There are things in life for which reason is of no use---love, for example. For love to happen, reason must be temporarily displaced, which is why many people have become incapable of love. They can't relax their grip long enough to let the flower of love bloom. Flowers can't bloom when the ground is frozen. This is why you'll rarely see love and marriage in the same room together! Love, by its very nature, can't be held within the confines of the law---love is freedom. That's why, even if you make a bond of love in the presence of God "till death do you part," that love still slips through your fingers. Even God is powerless to make it stay! So people start talking about "commitment”, but commitment through reason is no commitment at all! It's merely a Hallmark card; you didn't write it.
I can remember when the reality of this struck me for the first time. I was in deep meditation. I was meditating in the marketplace, so to speak, and I noticed that whenever I was alone, just enjoying the silence, everything was just beautiful and there was never a problem at all. But whenever someone else would enter the picture
they'd always bring some problem to solve. They'd often start creating problems right there on the spot! And the problems were such that one could see how they might be annoying, but not so terrible as to warrant the type of attention they were giving to them. Someone would be distraught because his or her lover didn't call at a certain time. Another would be upset because of something someone said to which they took offense. And they were giving to these problems as much energy as one would give to a matter of life or death! After a while, this became a real problem…for me! The presence of another human being became associated with the presence of problems. Where there was a person, there was discontentment lurking somewhere close by, and if there was more than one person something was bound to go wrong!
The strangest thing was that if they couldn't find a problem for which to complain, they'd sooner or later make a problem out of me! I'd just be sitting there, silent and peaceful, and eventually they’d become restless. They'd say I was socially unhealthy, weird, or what have you. Or else they'd be uncomfortable with my silence.
A good friend of mine once decided to make meditation a part of his daily life. Immediately people began asking, "What's happened to him?" "Has he gone insane?" To sit silently composed, at rest and collected, is the very signpost of sanity.
Predicting The Present Page 18