This is a card of…

Suspension

Intermission

New Perspectives

Waiting

Sacrifice

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

-Wendell Berry

Key 12 represents a time of suspension, usually one that is serving us in ways we cannot understand yet.

Maybe we are waiting for a response to a creative project we have put out into the world. Maybe a long-desired goal is dependent on timing, and all we can do is wait. Perhaps an injury or illness has taken us ‘out of the game’ and we find ourselves with time on our hands that cannot be filled with hectic activity. The universe is holding us in place.

The Hanged Man is in suspension, but he doesn’t seem unhappy about it. In fact, he’s using this time to calmly look at life from a new perspective. The glowing aura around his head would indicate he’s learning a lot from it. The Hanged Man is not made anxious by the idea of doing nothing when there is nothing to be done. He might even be enjoying the new insights this time in suspension gives him.

This card is associated with all times of stasis and suspension, from meditation to injury rehabilitation. There is a pause in activity, maybe a big enough pause that we feel the world has been upended. But it’s a pause that is out of our hands so we might as well use the time to observe and learn. The Hanged Man wants you to see this time of inactivity as a sacrifice in the most basic sense of the word- this period of suspended animation can be made sacred. Often the pause is demanded of us because there is some aspect of our lives we have not treated with appropriate reverence.

Advice:

Honor your downtime.

Look at things from a different angle

Be okay with stillness

Warning:

Don’t try to force things to get moving.

Let answers come to you, don’t push for them.

Don’t fill your time with tasks just to be busy.