Hanged Man and Falling Man

[pasara]

Hi Everyone.
Haven't been around here in ages, but glad to be back. I was reading a great article today that I'd heartily recommend. It is all about that famous photograph of the falling man from 9/11, and how that picture and others like it have been basically been banished from the record of events, at least in the US. Anyway, while reading the article I obviously was looking at the picture, and what struck me was how much it resembled the figure in the twelfth card, the Hanged Man. It is interesting to think about what the author of the article writes about our unwillingness to bear witness to the death of those that jumped that day in light of the card. The article is fairly long, but definitely worth the time to read. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the relationship of the two images.

Here is the link to the article:

Falling Man Article & Picture

- pasara

 

[Sulis]

There's an old thread about this: Giving new meaning to The Hanged Man thru the Falling Man (click)

 

[Sulis]

As I said in the original thread - I don't really see a connection between the 2 images; The Hanged Man is static and serene whilst this poor guy was falling, tumbling over and over until even most his clothes came off (in the original series of pictures).. It's a violent image of someone in free fall and this image is one frame out of many, chosen presumably because of the 'aesthetic value' of it compared to the rest of the series of images that this was taken from..

I honestly don't see any connection other than a very superficial, visual one.

 

[tarotbear]

Just popping in to comment - my thoughts in the original thread still stand.

As far as being 'banished from the record of events' - well, quite truthfully, since there are multiple images of this man and his face was fully in view - he is not a nameless, faceless victim but rather one whose identity is known and quite realistically the news media knows that this can be viewed as an invasion of his family's privacy, or in fact his family petitioned the courts to have the media stop showing this picture for exactly the same reasons.

Many years ago there was a rape/murder here in CT, and the victim's family went to court to stop the news media from saying in EVERY SINGLE TELECAST 'her naked, frozen body was discovered in a snow drift;' very hard to have closure when this fact has to be mentioned EVERY SINGLE TIME someone on TV mentioned the case. The courts agreed.

 

[ravenest]

As I said in the original thread - I don't really see a connection between the 2 images; The Hanged Man is static and serene whilst this poor guy was falling, ... I honestly don't see any connection other than a very superficial, visual one.

I agree, a hanging man is not falling by the very definition of what he is doing.

As far as an image goes and what it might suggest here is one idea.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=198840&page=5

A man falling is a powerful image as well and has other connotations ... but that image isn't on a Tarot card - they signify very different things.

 

[Zephyros]

I don't know about that. Now, the following would probably get me put on the gallows myself, but just a while ago we had a conversation about the HM, and a big theme of that is surrender. Sure, there's sacrifice, suffering, etc., but what is more HM than a man doomed, jumping out of a window from certain death to certain death? Tasteless as the thought is, even to me, I can see where someone seeing the connection would be coming from. Maybe we have become too Jungian/empowering/psychological/intuitive/self help, etc? The Traitor is a terrible card, originally, depicting events that did actually happen. Death is similar to pictures portraying the Black Death, in which hundreds of millions died in a few short years, there was no hope, and no one thought of "rebirth, regeneration, new hope," etc. then, simply because there wasn't any. There was only Death and perhaps the vague promise of Christian resurrection.

The most grisly of images can be made to fit into Tarot conventions. Let's look, for example, at the Kobe Tarot, created by a survivor of Dachau both during and after his time at the camp.

http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/kobe/

Analyzed perhaps a little too coldly, one could say it is completely non-traditional, yet its "Tarot-ishness" still comes through. Looking at Trump XXI, the World

http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/kobe/images/IMG_1163.JPG

the card shows, on one side, liberation and the sub-camp of Allach burning, with two Russian (judging by the flag) soldiers looking on. They seem to be joyful. The reverse side shows the price of that burning, as the two soldiers are sorrowful, yet almost casual with their hands in their pockets, and amidst the rubble bodies can be seen.

Terrible images, to be sure, yet they both actually occurred and were taken from life. At the end of the day, Tarot mirrors life, not the other way 'round. Summation, ending, the World; it's all there, in a most horrible fashion.

 

[ravenest]

Maybe we have become too Jungian/empowering/psychological/intuitive/self help, etc? .

Maybe, I remember years back Scion giving astrology (modern astrology a la Allen Leo) a serve for the very same thing, he suggested we had become to soft and whitewashing, in the good old days if you were born under a bad sign you were f***ed ... and that was it.

But we have moved on (in some respects), now one can get better medical, psychiatric and disabled care (a few examples). Death doesn't stalk down the streets wiping out most with plague (well, not in a society that sits around playing with, reading and having the time and expenses to discuss Tarot) anymore. Neither do 'we' string people up by the feet and leave them there to rot anymore.

Where these things DO happen, I assume they have little time for cards? Perhaps they do in the aftermath ... as your example shows.

But still ... I see no connection; a man hanging is NOT falling ... that's the idea - he isn't falling because he is hanging.

I would have thought that a man FALLING from a collapsing building, that was hit from an object in the sky and was bursting into flames would OBVIOUSLY relate to another tarot card ... whose inner meaning might give insight into the episode behind the photograph ????? (Suely I don't have to say what that card is?

 

[nisaba]

As I said in the original thread - I don't really see a connection between the 2 images; The Hanged Man is static and serene whilst this poor guy was falling, tumbling over and over

I'd always seen the falling people from the Towers as more akin to the falling people in The Tower, frankly.

That being said, I have one deck where the Hanged Man is portrayed as a string-puppet, pictured at the exact instant someone has cut the strings, just before a fall. The notion of that moment of suspense before frantic motion adds something to the card, for me.

 

[pasara]

Yes, the Tower connection is obvious. What struck me was the actual bodily pose which was identical to the Hanged Man. And yes, one of many, but not arbitrary, as it is this particular image that is known worldwide.

I like stretching my understanding of and making new connections to the meanings of the cards. It doesn't mean that suddenly my overall interpretation of a card in a reading markedly changes, but for me it seems to give my relationship to the card more depth. If something happens in my life, or I see something as in this case, and a card suddenly comes to mind, I take notice.

Thanks for the link to the past related discussion. My post was not so much about 9/11 itself, but more about the particular points of the article I linked to (a very recent article that it doesn't appear anyone was interested in reading) and the cultural ethos the author remarks upon. (As a side note, you will read that indeed there are a variety of conjectures that have been made about who the man in the picture is, but it is not known for sure. This, for me, makes it that much more compelling.)

As far as the Hanged Man card, my ruminations lead me to explore the idea of sacrifice, what that means and how it can manifest in paradoxical ways. I also thought about he change of perspective one gets in such a situation, the idea of resignation and release, despair vs embracing of fate, moments of silence and peace in the midst of tumult, and so on.