The Hanged Man. Sounds awful, but look closely …

he looks like he’s practicing extreme yoga. His face is calm in spite of the fact that he’s hanging by one foot from a tree … his hands are folded in Añjali Mudrā (namaste) … there’s a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds, birds wheeling overhead … all’s right with the world. Right?

Except not, of course. Our world has turned upside down.

Back in October, when I was contemplating the Texas Tarot project, I took out a book from the library and decided to try a little bibliomancy. I randomly opened the book to The Hanged Man; my first tarot card “draw.” At the time, we had just gotten a contract on the Hill Country house, but couldn’t start packing because of the inspection period when the buyers could still back out. We were, truly, hanging.

“This tarot thing could work,” I thought. And then plotted out the 22 creatures that could inhabit the Major Arcana of my dreams.

Fast forward to today. We are, truly, hanging once again.

The tarot books have so very much to say that it’s hard to keep it brief, but I’ll try …

• 78 Degrees: this card hints at great truths … where everyone else is frenzied, you will know peace … be who you are, even if others think you have everything backwards …

• Kitchen Table Tarot: let go of all perceived control of your life and let the lessons be absorbed … Sit. Down. Stop. Moving. You don’t have to decide everything in your life right this second …

• The Creative Tarot: it is a time to reflect and accumulate information … a time of waiting … something has to shake us out of our complacency; something that makes us question and seek a new answer …

And just in case it’s not perfectly clear, Angeles Arrien adds “The Hanged Man ultimately teaches us that there are always many more options, solutions, and perspectives to consider than those in which we are currently invested.”

Deep breath. Okay.

It was still dark out as I started to pick out covers, so no pictures, but I did snap a quick shot of a possible layout …

Nope. I kept cutting and shuffling images, framing the orb spider from here, after deciding to change the title label to “Hanging” because that spider is a she, not a he … and really, we’re all hanging right now. Then aligned trees and clouds and a sun, which, at the very last moment, got turned upside down …

For now, I’m hanging on to this …

“May all be safe … may all be healthy … may all be happy … may all be at peace …”

I have been sitting with this one for a couple of days, pondering the mixed messages in the tarot resources.

78 Degrees:  passiveness … apathy … negative imagination …

Kitchen Table Tarot:  this card can be defined by the word “meh” … maybe it’s best to sit under a tree …

The Creative Tarot:  what is real … what is gifted from the heavens … to look up would require hope, and it would require change … a better way is calling out to you …

And then Angeles Arrien invokes “Cancer people” … my dad was a Cancer (sigh). It’s a long story, not to be told here. And yet, Arrien posits goodness from that quarter.

So yeah, between the global pandemic and my ongoing, self-generated inner angst, I was inclined to buy into the negative reads on the Four of Cups. On the other hand, quoting Arrien, I was “no longer willing to support the dichotomy.”  I wanted to choose the better way.

One of these …

didn’t make the cut; its dark and dizzying lines just didn’t feel right. Instead, I found an image on the back side of the water scene that made perfect sense in the context of my ponderings. No accident that slicing the image in half yielded the perfect pairing.

Channeling the Smith-Waite Four of Cups …

I used the open hand at the bottom of the small book cover, and placed within it a photo of the spiraling ceramic bowl gifted by my mom and dad. The vessel became in my mind both a symbol of Cups and of the inheritance that has saved us from fear during the current financial debacle on Wall Street.

The resulting image is a study in light and dark, water and stone … of opening one’s eyes to appreciating gifts and using them well …

I hope.

P.S. I just read the subtitle on the small book cover :

The Courage to Change

According to Angeles Arrien and Mary Greer, tarot card XVIII, The Moon, is the “personality symbol that represents [my] expression in the outer world … talents, gifts, resources and how others see [me].” Said designation having been arrived at by adding together my birth month, birth day, and birth year … then adding the digits 1+9+8+0 together to get 18, The Moon card.

It’s interesting to note that I recently started to wear an old ring that’s been sitting in a box for longer than I care to admit. Whoever it belonged to before me wore it a lot, as evidenced by the chips and cracks …

But even so, when it is held to the light at just the right angle, it still glows …

which is why I’m pretty sure it’s a moonstone. And if you look closely, you’ll see there are 18 silver beads around the edge. Well of course there are.

Needless to say, I was more interested than usual to see what the books would reveal …

78 Degrees: The Moon is the card of the imagination … fear as well as joy … wild energy … if we accept the wild things brought out by the deepest imagination, then the Moon brings peace

Kitchen Table Tarot: this card is about intuition … primal … power … sometimes we’re scared for a reason

The Creative Tarot: we have to let dreams, intuition, and emotions be our guide … whatever happens with the Moon does not necessarily have to make sense; it’s more about a feeling

And last, from Angeles Arrien, “your inherent gift is to reveal and to make sound choices.”

I’m good with that.

The book cover stash yielded up two collages, the unlabeled one to the right being The Book by Juan Gris (1912) …

The Smith-Waite version of The Moon …

inspired me to include a crayfish from USA.gov and a ladder-cum-road from Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ladder to the Moon (1958). The “moon” itself was/is a photo of a luncheon-plate sized mushroom that came up each year at the Hill Country house …

printed and slipped under a circle cut into the Bruce Connor book cover, along with all the other bits and pieces …

There’s more I could say about the symbolism, but instead I’ll just note that I had no problem putting the label over the smaller, sun-like orb … because the moon rules.