Hanged Man - Divisions by zero
lemmy.dbzer0.com
Between two trees, he sways— one root in the earth, one reaching sky, bound by a thread of light to the quiet pull of space. His head tips down, but his eyes turn inward, searching the seams of shadow for a crack, a tremor, a way out of the silence. Coins spill from his hands, not gold but weightless, each one a thought discarded, a truth left hanging like breath caught between worlds. Suspended, he becomes the question— neither here nor there, but hung in the aching space where the body bends to dream. Red and white, his blood sings the song of every sacrifice, a rhythm lost in the sky’s endless reach. He sways, not from wind, but from the soft unraveling of the ground beneath him. To hang is to listen, to let go, to cling only to the pull of the unseen, the rope a tether to the self he cannot yet name. He is offered to himself, and the trees— those pillars of thought— stand silent, waiting for him to fall, or rise. 20241105_185549 [https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/fd8dec23-64e0-498d-b08e-25eb7e0fb542.webp]

Would love to hear what y’all think of this

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    Jokingly: “a way out of the silence” - wow, most of us are trying hard to find a way INTO that!:-D

    Fr tho: love it, especially that into. Some sections take a moment to parse like “weightless” (metal)? Which is ofc the point.:-) Though red and white… blood and bones perhaps? Nice pacing and format, and use of imagery and so much else that I lack the words for but manage to appreciate regardless:-).

    • SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      2·
      7 days ago

      Thank you. I still remember a lot of my inspirations for this from when I first wrote it over a year ago.

      “I know that I have been hanging from the stormy tree for nine consecutive nights, wounded by the spear, as an offering to Odin: myself offered to myself.” This here is a verse from Hamaval.

      Jung later analysed this saying, “hanging . . . has an unmistakable symbolic value, since swinging (hanging and suffering as one swings) is the symbol of unfulfilled longing or tense expectation”

      Now the hanged man is the 12th enigma of the tarot pack.

      FRAZER, Sir James G. The Golden Bough. London, 1911–15. Here you’ll find analysis that the primitive man kept his god living by keeping him between heaven and earth. A suspension … or mystical isolation.

      The inverted position in itself is the symbol of purification as it inverts the natural order.

      And so the hanged man hangs from his own doctrine. To which he is so attached he cannot separate himself and his very being hangs upon it.

      The hanged man wears red and white. The mystical colors of the two headed eagle of the alchemist. His arms tied with bags of gold coins falling. An allegory for the spiritual treasures to be attained upon self sacrifice.

      What I wrote I wanted read exactly as you did. And yet the symbolism on it’s back was supposed to allow you to feel the depth you did notice! Being able to be read as a story and a symbol was vital for me.

      I really appreciate your response. Thats basically exactly what I wanted. Thank you.

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        I have to be careful not to insert politics here bc it’s so much on all of our minds these days (worldwide even). But in any case:

        And so the hanged man hangs from his own doctrine. To which he is so attached he cannot separate himself and his very being hangs upon it.

        This seems such a profound warning as well as potentially a good time - or rather we think the latter but find ourselves trapped, and freedoms restricted, having less fun than we hoped with it.

        Then again, do we truly want to be free, or to go back to sleep in the hammock… or the noose - “a way out of the silence”?