Scarecrow
Soon it is Halloween. In the shops pumpkin- and spider-candles are for sale, little dolls that look like witches, cobwebs, and rubber bats. Halloween is a tradition I know nothing of, and what better way to explore it than with tarotcards? So today I use The Halloween Tarot for my card. My question is: "Who am I today?"
I have pulled The Hanged Man, pictured as a scarecrow. Suddenly my world has come to a stand-still, and I see the world from another perspective, just as the Hanged Man, who sees his surroundings from upside down.
At the moment I am not in my own home, but at the house of my mother in Driebergen, because she made a fall. She broke her wrist, has a blue face and a veeeeery hurting back. It is for me today as if life has come to a standstill, just as for the Hanged Man who cannot move about. I cannot do the activities that I had planned at my home. And besides that, from one day to another I see the world divided in activities that can be done with one hand and activities for which one needs both hands. So, I see the world from another perspective, as The Hanged Man, who is seeing it upside down.
Now, what has a scarecrow to do with Halloween? Scarecrows scare birds in the fields, so that cannot eat the crops. They belong to Halloween because their function is to scare.
By the way, funny is that the scarecrow on the picture is not really scary. Two crows are sitting on his tree. He has not not scared them away. On the contrary, he himself seems to be scared. He looks frightened by the green ghost-figures on the left. This is meaningful to me, because I was afraid for the wrist of my mother. (It were only ghosts. I know now that it is only a little tar in the bone).
Why is it a scarecrow that is pictured as the Hanged Man? The scarecrow, made from straw, has a symbolic function. It represents the grain which dies in the field to become grain again (just as Osiris and Jesus) a wonderful image for the Hanged Man who symbolizes exactly that.
Literature: Silver Raven Wolf, Halloween, Llewellyn, 2000.