In Paul Foster Case's book titled, "The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages", there is a passage in the chapter that explains the card "The Hanged Man" and I found it to be incredibly powerful to contemplate. I copy it here for you and although the entire chapter gives it more meaning, I think you'll see why I thought this was important.
The card shows a man turned upside down, inverted, in a position contrary to that which we find most people. Tradition says that St. Peter was crucified in this position - Peter was called "the rock of foundation".
Case writes, "For the basis of the occult (spiritual) approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing. ... This does not mean outspoken antagonism to others. On the contrary, such a spirit is precisely the way of the world which occultists (spiritually focused people) endeavor to avoid. Silent, unostentatious reversal of one's own way of life, combined with perfect tolerance of the ways of other people is the method of the practical occultist.
In what then does the reversal consist? Primarily, in a reversal of thought, in a point-of-view which is just the opposite to that accepted by most persons. At first there may seem to be no practical advantage in this, but just consider. One need only look about him to see that most people are sick, in trouble, cannot get along with themselves or with the world. Does it not become evident then that most people are in trouble because they have somehow put the cart before the horse in their practice of life?
In this scientific age, we know that everything is an expression of the working of the law of cause and effect. ...Thoughts are the seeds of speech and action. What happens to us is what we have selected, whether the selection be conscious and intentional or unconscious and unpremeditated. The emphasis is upon the importance of a changed view point and this change is no less than a total reversal.
Every human personality is completely dependent upon the All. As soon as this truth is realized the only logical and sensible course of conduct is a complete self-surrender. This surrender begins in the mind. It is the submission of the personal consciousness to the direction of the Universal Mind. Until we know that of ourselves we can do nothing, we shall never attain to adeptship. The greater the adept, the more complete his personal self-surrender.
This total submission to Life Itself makes us intensely positive in relation to other persons and in relation to the conditions of our environment. Nobody who follows this course ever becomes a human door mat. In the face of some of the appearances confronting us as we go through life, we need something more than just "our" personal energies to carry us through. In order to have courage and persistence in spite of seeming disappointment and difficulties we must know ourselves to be vehicles of a power to which nothing can be an insurmountable obstacle.
This thought does not imply that the Universal Will visits affliction, disease and poverty upon us. It means that in spite of appearances the cosmic Will works always toward good, that the universal Will-to-Good can not possibly be defeated. It meas that personality is known for what it is, a partial expression of the All, and that in consequence our personal notions of what is best for us may often be mistaken. Our notions of the ways in which good is coming to us frequently fall short of being adequate anticipations of the blessings ahead. Thus, so long as we continue to make false interpretations, the inexorable laws of the cosmos work out those interpretations in pain-bringing forms.
Yet pain itself is friendly, because it is educative. Suffering, poverty , disease, inharmony and death all have their lessons for us. These are the goads that prod the race onward in its search for truth. Disease teaches us the laws of health, frictions in human relationships goad us into the discovery of the secret of harmony, and the wise declare that in the mystery of death lies hidden the secret of immortality.
Thoughts like these are the exact reverse of what most persons think. Practices in mind-control and body-direction such as are taught by psychologists and occultists are laughed at by the world, and people who take them seriously are jeered at as men upside-down. Yet the world's ridicule should be the best evidence that the occultists are right. For the world is sick unto death, writhing in pain, hag-ridden by war, pestilence and famine; but the wise have found the way of health, of happiness and peace."
