More on Tarot Spells with The Hanged Man

One of the fun things about working with new artists’ tarot decks is seeing how the artwork can reveal new graphic relationships between different cards, and how this can be meaningful to divination and also to the construction of tarot spells.

So, my last post described a tarot spell for reversing Hanged Man-type situations, where you feel that your life is in a state of suspension.  One variation of this spell suggests laying out The Hanged Man, The Wheel, and The World while visualizing the cycle of change that can bring you to the idealized position of the dancing woman in The World, (of which The Hanged Man is something of a reversed mirror image).  Comparing how this combination of cards looks in different decks, this particular spell layout makes some striking graphic connections when you use Ciro Marchetti’s “Legacy of the Divine” tarot.  It happens that the man featured in The Hanged Man is the same figure as in The Wheel, as well as in the World; (as an Everyman figure, he is also The Fool and is featured as a prisoner of The Devil).  In the arrangement of cards which I will attempt to upload, (I hope I can insert this in the right place), you can see how nicely he can tumble from the Hanged Man position, onto the turning Wheel, until he flips back to The World position.

By the way, I like how the Cirque de Soleil-type artistry adds to the moving energy of this card combination.  In Marchetti’s other deck, “The Guilded Tarot,” there is also some graphic resonance between The Hanged Man and The Wheel, because The Wheel features a zodiac and the hanging man is suspended from a sun wheel.