An Interesting Combo: Tower rx - Hanged Man

Barleywine

I've returned to doing three-card daily draws using my recently created "Behavioral Architecture" spread, which is a ten-card layout that breaks down into three "daily cards" and a "wild card" random clarifier, with six "header" cards signifying the fixed personality qualities of my astrological Ascendant, Sun and Moon depicted in decan and court cards. I titled the three daily positions "My Focus Today," "My Power Today" and "My Mood Today."

Yesterday I got the Tower rx in the "Focus" position. This was the most puzzling card of the three, so I decided to use the "wild card" with it for interpretation. That card was the Hanged Man. The visual correlation between the two in the Gilded Tarot deck was quite striking.

I usually see the reversal of the Tower as showing its more "liberating" side rather than its destructive nature, since it looks like the falling figures will land on their feet and not their heads. When I placed the Hanged Man beneath the Tower rx, the now-upright figure in the Tower was almost a mirror image of the suspended figure in the Hanged Man. (See attachment.)

Lately I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ways to "open up" my reading in more creative ways (the idea of a "moving Significator" card is one example). This is in a formative stage right now that suggests the altered viewpoint of the Hanged Man waiting to be "brought to light." The Tower rx above it brings to mind the idea of "epiphany" or "enlightenment" related to the lightning bolt that we were discussing in another thread not long ago.

What emerged from this was a more fully-realized vision of a half-baked idea of mine to create a tarot spread for use with the Major Arcana that embodies the concept of "moving lines" as they exist in the I Ching, by which one hexagram (in this case, card combination) is changed into another by swapping yin and yang lines. In terms of cards, I've been reading the companion book for the DruidCraft Tarot that frequently talks about the relation of a trump card to its "numerological counterpart" (for example, Strength as 8 and the Star [1+7=8]). This is also expressed in the Voyager Tarot companion book. It's an old idea that I intend to use in a new way, not exactly as a "shadow" card but more as an "altered state" or "alternative reality" take on the original card. By changing a card into its "numerological counterpart," I could potentially create an oblique perspective on the original spread that could be revealing.

Anyway, I'm thinking that this scenario is rather neatly summarized by the visual coherence between the postures of the two figures in the Gilded Tarot Tower rx and the Hanged Man.
 

Attachments

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PAMUYA

Ready to walk out the door for work, this will be quick. Focus: a past event which is not resolved, you are holding on to it. It needs more review, since time has past you are not so emotionally charged, you will be able to see things from a different vantage point, making it easier to resolve/accept/move on.
 

headincloud

The end of (tower rx) the suspension of the hanged man, managing to overcome a selfish desire for the good of all.
 

Ace

The tower Rx can indicate stuckness--Unable to "ignite" as it were. And the Hanged man then indicates the question of what will you give up to get UNSTUCK. What will you change/sacrifice to make things MOVE again? Perhaps, the Tower Rx says you are TOO focused?


barb
 

samantha

The visuals are very interesting certainly ! They are *almost* identical, but I was drawn to what is not the same about them. Whilst the left leg of the Tower guy is straight (as the Hanged Man) and his right leg is bent (again as HM) they do not connect - thus not allowing for the shape of the number 4 that we have come (or not ..) to associate with the HM. I'm wondering if this is significant or not ? I'm sure you are far more aware of Thoth, golden dawn, tree of life/quabalah etc symbolism than myself so will leave you to ponder that one. Otherwise stream of consciousness thoughts made me think on right/left side (brain) attributes ...left logical etc right more intuitive. The Tarot spread you are working on would seem to make use of both, but the (slight) disparity between those two figures visually makes me wonder if the logical/intuitive are not quite in synch yet ? ( Tho perhaps they don't need to be as equal as I'm imagining ? ) Good luck 🍀
 

Barleywine

Ready to walk out the door for work, this will be quick. Focus: a past event which is not resolved, you are holding on to it. It needs more review, since time has past you are not so emotionally charged, you will be able to see things from a different vantage point, making it easier to resolve/accept/move on.

My daily draws are typically aimed at mundane matters and seldom have a psychological component. Nothing notable happened in either practical or mental/emotional terms on the day of the reading. However, the day after the reading we discovered that my wife had left her car lights on the evening before (literally, "a past event which is not resolved") and her battery was dead (a case of not being "electrically charged," but I was certainly "emotionally charged" about it when we tried to "walk out the door" to go shopping). I was "on the hook" to straighten it out and had to "get my head under the hood" to do that. Thanks for the suggestive phrases, they were accurate in their way.
 

Barleywine

The end of (tower rx) the suspension of the hanged man, managing to overcome a selfish desire for the good of all.

See my response to Payuma. Nothing unusual happened the day of the reading, but the day after was more "interesting." What had to be "overcome" was a dead car battery caused by events on the day of the reading, and the "selfish desire" was not to have to stand out in 20-degree weather to jump it. I think I can see literal hints of this in the card combination. Thanks for the input.
 

Barleywine

The tower Rx can indicate stuckness--Unable to "ignite" as it were. And the Hanged man then indicates the question of what will you give up to get UNSTUCK. What will you change/sacrifice to make things MOVE again? Perhaps, the Tower Rx says you are TOO focused?


barb
Failure to "ignite" is perfect! The morning after the reading the car wouldn't start due to a dead battery (my wife left the lights on the previous evening). It definitely wasn't "moving" until I got it "unstuck." What I sacrificed was my comfort (it's cold out there!) and a bit of my good humor.
 

Barleywine

The visuals are very interesting certainly ! They are *almost* identical, but I was drawn to what is not the same about them. Whilst the left leg of the Tower guy is straight (as the Hanged Man) and his right leg is bent (again as HM) they do not connect - thus not allowing for the shape of the number 4 that we have come (or not ..) to associate with the HM. I'm wondering if this is significant or not ? I'm sure you are far more aware of Thoth, golden dawn, tree of life/quabalah etc symbolism than myself so will leave you to ponder that one. Otherwise stream of consciousness thoughts made me think on right/left side (brain) attributes ...left logical etc right more intuitive. The Tarot spread you are working on would seem to make use of both, but the (slight) disparity between those two figures visually makes me wonder if the logical/intuitive are not quite in synch yet ? ( Tho perhaps they don't need to be as equal as I'm imagining ? ) Good luck 🍀

I also noticed the difference in the leg positions and the fact that the figures' arms are oriented differently. In the Thoth deck the Hanged Man's legs are formed in the symbol of Saturn, and the leg positions of the two figures in the Gilded Tarot could be construed to show the same idea. Saturn is "not going anywhere," so the inability to get moving due to my wife's dead car battery might be seen in this. The Tower figure has both arms raised, looking something like a Neptune glyph, and Neptune is assigned to the Hanged Man by modern tarot writers. Of course, they could just be expressing my feelings of exasperation when we discovered what had happened. Me having to bring a "jump start" to the battery could be shown by the lightning bolt coming up from "below" the reversed Tower.
 

headincloud

My daily draws are typically aimed at mundane matters and seldom have a psychological component. Nothing notable happened in either practical or mental/emotional terms on the day of the reading. However, the day after the reading we discovered that my wife had left her car lights on the evening before (literally, "a past event which is not resolved") and her battery was dead (a case of not being "electrically charged," but I was certainly "emotionally charged" about it when we tried to "walk out the door" to go shopping). I was "on the hook" to straighten it out and had to "get my head under the hood" to do that. Thanks for the suggestive phrases, they were accurate in their way.

Whether we choose to read the psychological component or not it's always there, what I hear you saying is you're not interested in that side of things which is fair enough. Self awareness is the very first lesson tarot has to teach us, we need to look to the inner self warts, patterns and all and until we understand ourselves I don't see how we can read for others. We need to link a cards to feelings not events to understand them imho but each to their own of course. Being an intellectual you may be using all of your intellectual defences to avoid facing feelings.