RunningWild
The Drowned Man
This card perplexed me until I found this from Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom (pg. 152)
"The Golden Dawn introduces an alternative title, the Drowned Man, to match the description "The Spirit of the Mighty Waters." ...In Water, all things that seemed fixed and rigid dissolve, including the ego and its assumptions about reality. To "drown" can mean to surrender, to release the self."
And yet this Hanged Man is held in place by the roots of something else. He is free to look at the world anyway he wants.
Further along in the section on the Hanged Man, Rachel Pollack states:
"The querent who receives the Hanged Man may be an outsider, or with different attitudes than other people, with no push to convince others, and no need to seek others' approval. Being tied to the tree means being connected to something beyond yourself, and thus able to withstand the winds of society or other people's opinions." (pg. 155)
This part isn't particularly revealing, or showing new insight into this card in general, but elsewhere it was noted that, within the Mary-El Tarot, many of each card's insights seem to be things that are just beyond our view of the picture in front of us. So for me, this idea of being connected to something beyond the individual was the part that was missing. Although, I like the idea that the root of the tree holding the Hanged Man was, perhaps, the mangrove-ish roots of the High Priestess.
This card perplexed me until I found this from Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom (pg. 152)
"The Golden Dawn introduces an alternative title, the Drowned Man, to match the description "The Spirit of the Mighty Waters." ...In Water, all things that seemed fixed and rigid dissolve, including the ego and its assumptions about reality. To "drown" can mean to surrender, to release the self."
And yet this Hanged Man is held in place by the roots of something else. He is free to look at the world anyway he wants.
Further along in the section on the Hanged Man, Rachel Pollack states:
"The querent who receives the Hanged Man may be an outsider, or with different attitudes than other people, with no push to convince others, and no need to seek others' approval. Being tied to the tree means being connected to something beyond yourself, and thus able to withstand the winds of society or other people's opinions." (pg. 155)
This part isn't particularly revealing, or showing new insight into this card in general, but elsewhere it was noted that, within the Mary-El Tarot, many of each card's insights seem to be things that are just beyond our view of the picture in front of us. So for me, this idea of being connected to something beyond the individual was the part that was missing. Although, I like the idea that the root of the tree holding the Hanged Man was, perhaps, the mangrove-ish roots of the High Priestess.