The Hanged Man's Kitchen?

I had a dream last night in which I was distinctly shown two tarot cards. One was the High Priestess card from the Pythagorean Tarot. The other was numbered XII and called "The Hanged Man's Kitchen." It bore a black-and-white line drawing of pots and pans hanging up on a kitchen wall, with no hanged man anywhere to be seen. Strange!

So I guess this leaves me with two questions. First, does anyone know of any deck that portrays the Hanged Man in this way? And second, what on earth do you think it means?

-Baneemy

Oh my, I have no idea what it means or so... But I must admit I laughed out loud when I read your post. That's a really charming dream!

This is going to be a little vague, but I know I read something about this.

The process of cooking has a certain parallel to alchemy (well, not really, but..). Individual ingredients go into the pots, and another thing, the cooked dish comes out. The final product is made from but significantly different to the individual ingredients.

The Hanged Man is in process of being profoundly changed. Could be something like that.

Interesting take, Marion. The only connection I had been able to make was that the pots and pans were "hanged" on the wall. The idea of cooking as a symbol of profound, irreversable change makes a lot of sense.

I also got the impression that the guy really liked cooking and would have been in his kitchen, if it weren't for the fact that he was off somewhere else getting hanged. Those pots and pans looked so lonely!

Also, any idea what I should make of the fact that this card was juxtaposed with a perfectly ordinary High Priestess?

Made my night

Baneemy said:

I also got the impression that the guy really liked cooking and would have been in his kitchen, if it weren't for the fact that he was off somewhere else getting hanged.

Click to expand...

I hate it when that happens, too.

Reminds me of the old New Yorker cartoon: a guy is kneeling before the chopping block, hands tied behind his back, and he looks up at the black-hooded executioner poised with his axe, and he says, "Did you ever have a tune running through your head that you just couldn't get rid of?"

Very interesting..

Letting my mind wander a bit and also bringing in the act of cooking in the pot, here is what I get;

The High Priestess holds the secrets, the herbs, the spices, the origins of it all.
The pots and pans are tools, but empty ones, and they must wait passively to be filled with content to really be of any use.

Perhaps these pots and pans are waiting for the High Priestess to fill the pots and give them purpouse?
Other times, they wait for other content. But here, I think that maybe you should let your intuition fill the empty pots and make them putter and simmer with warmth and joy.

It seems to me a clean and sterile kitchen is a bit cold, in waiting but not with any proper life. (Though wood interior can make it feel a bit softer.)
A kitchen with smells of spices and little messes, a dirty plate here and a glass with a small amount of milk there, a just-rinsed-off whisk laying by the side of the basin and a pot or pan puttering away at the stove, possibly a light on in the oven as something is being prepared.. That's a Living kitchen, a place for sharing space and life, where noses, eyes and mouths can enjoy what they sense..

The kitchen is the heart center of human life (or at least is was like that some time ago, remember when all were hanging around in the kitchen for having a nice chat or preparing dinner together) but it is also related to your guts so maybe you are sensing something which is not revealed until now (High Priestess).

I like this image. Never really thought about what the Hanged Man's home looks like.

I see both the Hanged Man and High Priestess as very spiritual cards. The kitchen, on the other hand, is the mundane center of the house. Not boring mundane -- practical mundane. It's where the work of daily living gets done.

Spiritual pursuits are all very well and good, but we must remember to feed and take care of ourselves. Perhaps your dream was telling you to focus a little more on the practical everyday realities of life. Don't let those pots and pans get dusty!

I agree with a previous poster... a clean, empty kitchen is somewhat a sad thing. The Hanged Man is so hyper-focused on his spiritual enlightenment that he is neglecting his family and physical health. Go bake a big meal to share with family and friends.

I also see the High Priestess as a card of balance. This reinforces the need for a healthy balance between spiritual and mundane life.

You weren't by any chance browsing in the Tarot deck Creation Forum before you went to sleep, were you Baneemy? Tk2dsky has a great deck-in-progress called the Kitchen Witch deck and the Hanged man is a bunch of herbs hanging up in the kitchen. Here's the thread:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=47616

Baneemy: Dream symbols largely personal & peculiar to the individual.

The High Priestess represents knowledge & wisdom; usually of the esoteric variety but not necessarily of the subconscious associated with The Moon.

Juxtapositioned with The Hanged Man's Kitchen, evokes the stirrings of that underlying knowledge or the preparatory. Perhaps in the process of refinement which eventually leads to Temperance & a blend representing a more integrated understanding.

I would examine the current trend of the life & the experiences.