This
blogpost was written as my contribution to the 2015 Tarot Blog Hop themed to
celebrate the Autumn Equinox or Mabon which falls on 22 September, marking
the start of the Autumn season. Our bloghop wrangler, Maureen AislingDuffy-Boose had asked that we pick a card from the Tarot deck that we
associated most with the Autumn Equinox and attempt to create our own depiction
of that card.
Celebrating Autumn
Equinox With The Hanged Man
The
Tarot card that I associate the Autumn Equinox with, is the Hanged Man, which
is a card that reflects the process of letting go, healing, surrender, taking
on different perspectives, change, and taking time out for learning new skills and
gathering of new knowledge to lay the foundation stones for renewal.
Autumn
as a season is much like the Hanged Man.
It is a time of release and letting go when we see the leaves turning
colour from green to brown, and finally dropping off the trees with absolutely
no resistance. As Mabon marks the second harvest where people gather and store
crops to prepare for the impending winter months, it is also a reflection of a
time to gather knowledge and skills to prepare us for what is to come.
A Time Of Letting Go
The
Hanged Man, and its association with Autumn is particularly meaningful for me
at this time, In more ways than one,
this has been a period where I had been giving myself some time and space to
manage the letting go of several aspects of my life:
·
This was a period of
spiritual renewal where I was forced to confront limiting factors from my past,
let go of my ego, and deal with my anger issues caused by my fear of lack of
control. Before I struggled with my intuition from time to time, but with this
spiritual renewal, my intuition developed further from a space of heart-centredness.
·
This was a period of
learning, studying, finding myself and honing my intuitive skills. As a consequence of that purification process
of letting go, I started letting go of my total dependence on my usual
metaphysical tools of tarot cards, numerology and astrology as I developed my
claircognitive and clairaudience skills.
·
This was a period of
dealing with my resistance to the changes in the dynamics of my relationship
with my son. This again, has to do with my fear of lack of control. Our
relationship went through a roller-coaster of emotions from anger, to
disappointment, to sadness simply because it was difficult to deal with his
growing up and his preparing to “leave the nest”. I wanted to hold on to every
last vestige of him. Only when I learnt
to let go of this fear of lack of control, and allow him to thrive as an independent
young man, watch him learn from his own mistakes and explore the world around
him without me, that I found peace again with my son.
·
This was a period of
changes at my workplace. Organizational
changes always brought about uncertainty, stress and fear. However when I learnt to let go and change my
perspectives that the new environment could be a good opportunity to further
push the boundaries of creativity and strategic thought leadership, that I was
able to better manage the change and be a better mentor and manager to my team.
Designing My Hanged Man
Card With Crystal Energy
When
I thought about creating my own Hanged Man card for the Autumn Equinox, I felt
I was not going to do it justice by copying the usual image of the Hanged Man
depicted in most Tarot decks, that is, a figure suspended upside down from a
tree. That image etched in the minds of most Tarotists has already done a wonderful job of teaching
us so much because that card is chocked full of meaningful symbolisms.
 |
| From the Morgan Greer Tarot deck by Lloyd Morgan and Bill Greer |
I
wanted instead to create a card image that had the symbolisms of the Hanged Man
card, yet was a reflection of my current journey and the support that I had
been given to walk that journey. So I
chose to design my Hanged Man card using a combination of crystal gemstones and
photography.
Co-creating The Hanged
Man Crystal Gemstone Bracelet With Jennifer Toka
I
loved working with crystals, and the energy of crystal gemstones are what had
been supporting me through this period of change, when I had to manage stress,
anxiety, the reluctance to let go, my anger issues and my vulnerabilities. So I
got my friend Jennifer Toka, a fellow intuitive and jewelry designer who owned www.healingdragongems.com
to design a bracelet for me to reflect this period of change, letting go and
renewal that I was going through. I
wanted her to pick the gemstones and design the piece using purely her
intuition and my vision. Part of the
brief, was that because Jennifer was also a professional photographer, I wanted
her to take a photograph with that jewelry as the subject but composed the
image by using purely her intuition, in such a way that would allow the image
to depict what the Hanged Man card was all about.
Take
note that Jennifer lives thousands of miles away from me. She is in America and I am in Singapore. Yet when we worked on this project together,
it was almost like we were speaking to each other in our dreams, telepathically
building a piece of jewelry together and linking that jewelry to my past, my
present and my future. We co-created the image of the Hanged Man card together
using her creativity, our intuitive skills, and our vision.
Metaphysical Properties
Of The Gemstones Within The Hanged Man Bracelet
For
the main imagery, the final outcome resulted in a bracelet made up of gemstones
that were very much Autumnal in colours and had properties to support me in my
process of renewal and letting go:
·
Gold Rutilated Quartz
which cleanses, energizes and removes barriers to spiritual growth,
·
Cat’s Eye Quartz to
transform negative thoughts, ground and enhance intuition,
·
Garnet for illuminating
darkness, lessening anger, build courage,
·
Amber to balance
emotions, clear the mind, ease stress and manage fear,
·
Carnelian to give
courage to move forward onto a new path
·
Ruby to recharge energy
and stimulate creativity
·
Amethyst for healing
and calming emotions
·
Moonstone to support
intuition and connection with higher self.
·
Smoky quartz for
grounding, and removing negative energy
Stringing The Bracelet
Together To Symbolize The Hanged Man
Aside
from the metaphysical properties of the stones that aided me in my time of
change, letting go and renewal, Jennifer was guided to string them all together
in such a way where the focal gem of Gold Rutilated Quartz paired with the
Garnet actually symbolized the Sun Goddess emerging from an eclipse. Because Autumn equinox was about the balance
of light and day, the Amber in its Autumnal colour was positioned to balance
the strength of the Gold Quartz and the Garnet.
She put 4 dark cherry polished Amber stones on each side of the bracelet
because the Hanged Man is usually depicted being hung upside down with his legs
crossing to make the number 4, the number of building of foundations
through the gathering of knowledge and
skills. Because Autumn and the Hanged
Man were symbols of changing perspectives and renewal, the bracelet started
with dark coloured Amber at the top and then separated by the green pearl to
symbolized change, followed by the brighter gemstones that symbolized renewal.
She
then fastened a gold Chinese coin at the end of the bracelet. This coin honors
my Chinese heritage, and as a coin, it not only had protective energy but much
like the ancient days where coins were buried with the dead to aid them in
their passageway across the other world, this Chinese coin symbolized my
passageway from my old self, to a renewed self.
When
Jennifer held the completed bracelet up, the piece resembled the original Hanged
Man imagery where the focal gem of that Gold Rutilated Quartz resembled the head of the Hanged Man, the
Chinese coin resembled his torso, and the gems on each side of the focal point
of the bracelet were his arms.
I
loved this beautiful piece of jewelry so much that I had dreams of co-creating
a piece of jewelry with Jennifer for the rest of the cards in the Tarot deck,
and I would have called it the Healing Dragon Gems Tarot Deck!
After
putting this bracelet together with the highly symbolic gemstones that
reflected the essence of the Autumn Equinox and the Hanged Man card, Jennifer then put her photography skills to
work by composing an image of what we both thought would best depict the Hanged
Man card in Tarot using that bracelet.
Behold Our Version Of
The Hanged Man Card
 |
Photo credit: Jennifer Toka and Strve Murphy
Concept direction: Joanna Ash |
Our
version of the Hanged Man card depicts an image of a mother suspending her baby
up in the air. She wanted to play “airplane”
with her by tilting her downwards with her arms outspread just like an airplane
swooping down the sky. Her baby clearly
felt uncomfortable in that position and was poised to cry. Just like the Hanged Man, the mother was hoping
for her daughter to surrender in trust that Mummy will never allow her to be
accidentally dropped from her hands. In
assurance, Mummy held her close, and that was a representation of the Divine help
that we get when we faced challenges that required us to step back, recalibrate
our thoughts and just Let Go, Let God.
Just
as the Hanged Man card was about learning knowledge and garnering skills, Jennifer
was teaching her daughter the skill of flexibility, building trust through
play, having fun by letting go of fear.
Just
as the Hanged Man card was about sacrifice, release and letting go, Jennifer’s
relationship with her daughter was a manifestation of the same because of the sacrifices
she had to make along the way as a Mother for the love of her daughter. She would be spending these years, nurturing
her daughter, knowing that it would be a relationship of a lot of good times as
well as bad times but at the end of it, she would need to let her go as she
walks into adulthood.
Finally,
on the mother’s wrist, is the Autumn Equinox bracelet which she had specially
made with the gems that reflect the essence and color of Autumn. We also opted
to name the card SURRENDER instead of calling it the Hanged Man. Surrender,
most aptly defined the Autumn Equinox and everything that the season stood for,
knowing that annually, the season brought with it the typical changes of mother
nature which served to prepare us for the harsher months of Winter.
I
hope you like the Hanged Man card created by Jennifer and I. If I had the opportunity to develop a full
Tarot deck of 78 cards using Jennifer’s intuitive jewelry designing skills and
her photography, I definitely would. Do
check out Jennifer’s awesome work at www.healingdragongems.com
and if you were to place an order for a piece of jewelry from her, do quote Sun
Goddess to get your 15% discount.
About The Writer:
The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and an
intuitive reader by accident who deploys the combined modalities of a Tarot,
Numerology and Astrology overlaid with her Clairvoyant and Clairsentient skills
to deliver her readings with authenticity. She was awarded a Certified Professional
Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA)
and is also a certified numerologist. She is currently running a
consultancy based in Singapore called Sun Goddess Tarot, which provides
confidential intuitive readings combining the metaphysical disciplines of
Tarot, Numerology and Astrology via face to face and emails as well as readings
at corporate and private events and workshops. As a member of the
American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles
(TABI), Joanna governs her practice under the associations’ respective codes of
ethics. She is currently mentoring
fellow intuitives on the path of developing their intuitive potential and teaches
Tarot and Numerology as well.
Instagram: @SunGoddessTarot
