The Hanged Man: Are You Willing to Suffer to Learn?

Last updated on: June 10, 2015 at 6:04 am by Kimberly Gier

The Hanged Man: Are You Willing to Suffer to Learn? 2015-06-10T06:04:52+00:00 Kimberly Gier

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

A few weeks ago Gaia Community worked with the Hanged Man as part of an ongoing series of rituals exploring the archetypes of the Tarot. Each of the archetypes of the Major Arcana presents its own challenge of interpretation and integration, and the Hanged One is no exception. This card calls to mind Odin hanging on the tree to gain knowledge of the runes, or Jesus hanging on the cross to gain knowledge of death and resurrection. It also calls to mind the question asked of Wiccans and others upon initiation, all variations on the same idea, “Are you willing to suffer to learn?”

Our ritual focused on the themes of sacrifice, surrender, and submission that arise when many writers contemplate the Hanged One. These are not words that always sit comfortably on me. The last two especially are not states that I happily inhabit. I’m a strong-willed human being with the right of self-determination, after all. That’s part of how I came to Paganism generally, and UU Paganism specifically.

My Paganism involves making my own decisions about my life rather than following dogma or submitting to the will of the church. It involves critical thinking and the ability to act on my conclusions with actions that don’t always line up with the mainstream way of being. I think this is not uncommon among Pagans. We act up. We don’t fall in line, even with each other. We argue with our own gods. So submission and surrender, those are not the sort of spiritual experiences I’m usually looking for.

Sacrifice, though, I can work with. As a member of a Pagan group that is open to the public, I get lots of opportunities to talk about sacrifice, even with other Pagans and spiritual seekers, because it turns out that “do you guys sacrifice animals?” is still a burning question on people’s minds about Paganism. For anyone wondering, I do not sacrifice animals; I do, however, offer up a long list of things tangible and intangible, in service to the gods: time, work, flowers, food, drink, study, art, and so on and so forth.

These are the things I set aside for the gods, things I dedicate to them either because I want to be in the sort of relationship with the gods where we trade gifts and favors, or because in a neo-Platonist way I want to elevate my soul and bring it into harmony with a particular deity. Or because I’m a practical pagan, sometimes I sacrifice things, especially work or effort, because the act of dedicating that effort, making it holy, changes my experience of the effort itself, often making it more palatable in some way or another. So I’m alright with sacrifice.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Submission, though? Surrender? Not so much. And yet… I’ve been thinking about it since the ritual, and perhaps one useful place for submission is in the idea of submitting to your own will, your own prior choices. Lately I’ve been reading Better than Before, Gretchen Rubin’s work on habits. One of the ideas that Rubin puts forth is that sticking to a good habit is front-loading your free will in a matter. You decide once to do a thing (or not do a thing), and while you might struggle with the thing for a while, if you keep reminding yourself that you already made up your mind on the issue, eventually the habit becomes automatic. In this model you don’t have to choose on a daily basis to brush your teeth or go to the gym or whatever it is, because you’ve already chosen once to do it every day and you continue to respect that choice, until maybe some day you’ll choose something different. This is a sort of submission that looks a lot like self-mastery. I can work with that.

More specifically, within Paganism there is an idea this reminds me of, which is that the eternal soul chooses before each birth what sort of life it will lead and what sort of lessons it will learn, and then immediately before incarnation it forgets all that it has chosen so that it can experience it all moment by moment and do the work it needs to do. Myself, I do not believe that we choose our lives in every particular before we are born, though it’s been a popular theory from the ancient Greeks all the way to the modern age.

It’s an interesting idea though, and there are times where the you-of-the-moment might do well to submit to the will of the eternal-you. And this is one interpretation of the Hanged One card, that there is some spirit or spark which voluntarily descends into incarnation in order to learn. Odin goes voluntarily to the tree, Christ to the cross, Inanna to the underworld, and the witch into the initiatory circle, all answering yes to the question of willingness to suffer in order to learn.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Lastly, contemplating submission and surrender, I’m reminded of Byron Katie’s assertion in her book Loving What Is that “When you argue with reality, you lose – but only 100% of the time.” I’m a great arguer with reality – I think anybody who identifies as magic-worker, activist, mystic, dreamer, any of those sorts of things, we all are engaged in an ongoing fight with reality, as we pit what is out there against what we think ought to be out there. Now, I don’t think this is a bad thing at all, don’t get me wrong. We absolutely need to be engaged in the work of making the world more like we think it should be. But I do think Katie’s on to something with her use of the word “arguing”.

If a thing is true, no amount of my arguing with it will make it untrue. If I am ill, I can take action to help myself heal, or I can adapt to my illness, but not until I give up arguing that I am not ill. I have to accept that I am ill in order to take useful action about it. If society is not just, no amount of pretending that the injustice doesn’t exist will make anything better for anyone. Giving up an argument with an unpleasant reality isn’t any fun, but it’s a necessary prerequisite to doing something useful, to actually creating a change.

So what does the Hanged One offer us? It’s impossible to say with certainty, but the peaceful expression hints that this is no punishment, no tortment for torment’s sake. The Hanged One calls us to examine our assumptions, our certainties about the world we occupy. Surrendering comforting pretense and illusion may be the first step to learning where we truly need to be going. Our own journey must be lived, not merely read and recited and reblogged.

Previous Post

June 9, 2015

The CUUPS Podcast #29 - June 2015

Next Post

June 10, 2015 Spiritual Hygiene

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Current Events CUUPS Press Release Interfaith liturgy Media Review podcast Religious Education Seasonal Reflection Spiritual Practice Summary Uncategorized

Select a Month July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 January 2026 December 2025 October 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz