The advice card can be the most powerful card in your tarot reading.

I am often amazed after the initial reading of the Celtic Cross spread in a tarot reading, when there’s more clarity about the present situation, more understanding about the direction and potential head, different aspects are clearer, that so often the most powerful card to pull next is an advice card. 

I don’t know how many times I have been awed at how insightful and helpful the advice card has been in a tarot reading.   

Last week a dear client came to Battersea for an in person reading and she got the Hanged Man. If I had to give one word for the Hanged Man it would be surrender.  So not necessarily the easiest advice to follow.

The Hanged Man is depicted hanging upside down from a tree by one foot.  From this position he is forced to look at the world upside down.  Hanging there, he has no choice but to surrender to this new world view. He actually looks quite relaxed with his arms folded as if he’s happy to hang there a while, and there’s the golden hallo of enlightenment around his head.  The kind of hallo we see depicted around spiritual people in religious paintings.

I have learned to rather love the word surrender, because actually it a relief to be given permission to let go and just hang for a while giving yourself the opportunity to look at things from a different point of view. It does help if you are able to surrender willingly, because then you release yourself from feeling a victim of circumstance; of you being the sacrifice. Rather YOU have CHOSEN to become conscious of the bigger picture and let go.  

Often the Hanged Man comes in a reading, to help us recognise that while it feels like there’s a price to pay, the ‘sacrifice’ is for the good, and for enlightenment.  Enlightment not necessarily in the spiritual sense but in the sense of being enlightened with a new and fresh perspective. Letting go so that something new can come in. Expansion. And in your heart of hearts you know it is the right thing to do.

Still I think a bit of pain is attached because none of us are perfect human beings and if you are anything like me;  someone who is rather attached to my views and opinions, after all I’ve invested so much in them so far!   So the idea of being hung upside down so that that I am forced to let go of my world view sounds like a big sacrifice to me!  Which is why I try to embrace the word surrender as it’s a much gentler word and reminds me of kindness.  Kindness to yourself and others in this situation will help too.

My client is a beautiful, intelligent, principled woman with a strong family values and moral compass, for her the Hanged Man seemed to be saying sorry, you’ve got to let the way you are looking at this go completely, trying to navigate the situation from your moral world view makes no sense anymore.

And when you consider whether the price of your ‘sacrifice’ is worth it……the Tarot says it is, for your long term growth.  Unfortunately and that’s what so difficult about life, there are no guarantees, and like the Hanged Man, strung up by one foot from a tree, we have to consider whether we are willing to change the way we are looking at things; whether we can surrender our expectations of how things should be;  or whether this is the moment to surrender our whole investment in the situation and walk away.

The Tarot shows you the potential ahead, we are the people who activate the potential.  I’d like to think the Hanged Man reminds us of the potential in surrendering our expectations and worldly desires to ‘what is’, and that by doing that allows the possibility of the world righting itself.

You never know with a new perspective;  a brand new feeling of optimism can open up, a new way, a new start, a new hope?