The image of the Hanged Man in the Tarot carries a silence more profound than many volumes of theology. A man is bound by one foot to a living tree, suspended head down, his hands tied, his face calm. Around him branches have been cut away. These severed limbs speak of something that must be pruned if the Spirit is to rise.
Among the bonds to be sacrificed are those of family, those invisible threads that promise nurture yet often guard the gates of the cosmic Demiurge. Family is the primal house of flesh, and the soul that seeks to ascend must one day leave that house behind. To linger too long within its shadow is to confuse memory with destiny, safety with freedom and womb with rebirth. Christ himself spoke of this sword, a blade that divides mother from daughter and son from father, not through cruelty but through the fire of vocation.
I. The Cut Branches of the Hanged Man
In Jodorowsky’s readings of the Marseille deck, the Hanged Man always revealed this theme of severed branches. He saw in those cut limbs the bonds of kinship, the ties of blood that can stifle more than they shelter. Family preserves the body, but the Spirit cannot remain a prisoner of repetition. The Hanged Man avoids a tireless struggle against his fate; he yields, allowing his perspective to be inverted. To those who watch, he looks like a victim; to himself, he sees the world reversed, the heavens open. The cutting of branches is painful, but, without pruning, the tree cannot bear fruit.
The serenity on the face of the Hanged Man is the sign that this act is consecration, not exactly rebellion. The sacrifice of family attachment is the offering of roots back to the soil. In the stillness of inversion, one becomes free to hear a higher Word. The family expected conformity, repetition of their story; the Spirit demands silence and inversion, so that a new story may begin.
II. The Path of Mem and the Waters of the Mother
On the Tree of Life the Hanged Man is on the path that unites Hod and Geburah. Hod is the sphere of Mercury, the realm of Hermes-Thoth and the archangel Raphael; Geburah is the sphere of Mars, the abode of Camael, fierce angel of judgement. The current that flows between them is marked by the Hebrew letter Mem, whose meaning is water, mother, root. It is the element of Briah, the world of creation, which mirrors the maternal waters of the uterus.
The bonds of family are the outer shell of these same waters, protective but restrictive. The soul cannot awaken if it remains submerged in the amniotic silence of inherited identity. Mem is the mother who holds and the mother who releases; her gift is life, her demand is detachment. To walk this path is to learn the paradox of water, that it sustains and drowns, heals and suffocates.
The tie between Mercury and Mars cannot be casual. It joins thought and sword, interpretation and separation. Raphael heals by naming; Camael judges by cutting. The Hanged Man is bound between them, forced into the baptism of water that prepares for fire. Family is the first battlefield of this tension. Words can bind as surely as steel; the stories of kin can chain the Spirit with invisible ropes. Only through immersion in Mem can these bindings be transformed into release.
III. Imma and the Column of Severity
Hod and Geburah belong to the left pillar of the Tree, the column of Imma, the Great Mother, the matrix of form, structure and law. Within her domain family becomes law of flesh, a pattern handed down without question. To be born is to be inscribed into this; to awaken is to step beyond it. Family ties must wither so that the Spirit can ascend through the column without chains. The Demiurge thrives in repetition. The sword of Christ fulfils cuts this, as the Word must pass through separation to become fertile.
To abandon the house of family is not a rejection of love but its fulfilment. The Spirit receives love most purely when it no longer clings to the forms that first carried it. The Hanged Man invites the soul into that inversion where memory is released and vocation revealed. To remain within the house of the mother is to remain unborn; to leave it is to enter the baptism of water that leads to fire. The path of Mem is the womb reopened as passage, the place where the Demiurge loses his power, and the Spirit walks free.
Fiat Lux.