The Hanged Man card is sometimes referred to as the traitor card. As history makes blatantly clear, persons whose individual conscience is in opposition or divergent from the collective viewpoint, can appear as traitors to the Establishment. Often upside down in relation to family, friends and the government, nonconformists can be even branded as criminals.
“Clift’s is one of the voices – and one of the most important female voices – that rose above the crowd during the post-war period, as the western world unknowingly girded itself for the social revolution that was to come.
Through her columns she advocated for a bolder, more outward looking future, and as someone who was naturally cosmopolitan she was avidly interested in seeing Australia become more open to the world and better integrated into the Asia-Pacific”.
A Woman Ahead of Her Time – The Conversation
When Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to shivering humanity, Zeus made an example of him. He was bound to a rock and condemned to suffer for his defiance.
It is an old story, but the punishment is familiar. Establishments have never been especially fond of those who challenge the rules, question the authorities or venture beyond the lines drawn for them.
And yet, without these sacred rebels, we might still be sitting in the dark.
The Hanged Man seems at first glance to be another figure of punishment. Suspended, helpless, turned upside down. But look again. He is not necessarily defeated. He has surrendered the conventional view and discovered another way of seeing.
The Hanged Man represents independence from the flock, the willingness to see things differently, see them your way. It can point to critical thinking or awareness (especially when paired with other cards that deal with this theme) and it can represent courage.
Little Red Tarot
Charmian Clift understood something of this.
Born in 1923 in North Kiama, in a straggle of weatherboard workers’ cottages regarded by the townsfolk as being on the wrong side of the tracks, she might have been expected to remain within the boundaries prescribed by class, geography and gender.
Instead, she crossed them.
Clift became one of Australia’s most compelling writers of the post-war era. Her columns reached large audiences, but she refused to confine herself to the subjects considered suitable for a woman. She wrote fiercely and passionately about war, conscription, hunger, politics and the Greek junta. She wrote from the margins and, importantly, she wrote against the comfortable view.
Her own life was hardly lived according to the respectable script. Her relationship with the celebrated writer George Johnston, including the scandal surrounding their affair, placed her firmly outside the conventions expected of women in her time. Yet she endured the judgement and continued to write.
That is where Clift meets the Hanged Man.
She knew what it was to be suspended between worlds: between respectability and rebellion, between the expectations placed upon women and the life she wanted to live, between the accepted story and the story she could see from her own peculiar angle.
Perhaps that is the gift of the Hanged Man.
Turn the world upside down and suddenly the things we thought were fixed begin to look rather different.
Charmian Clift didn’t simply step outside the lines.
She made us question who had drawn them.
And perhaps that is why her words continued to inspire generations of women writers after her.
Like Prometheus, she carried fire.
Like the Hanged Man, she was willing to pay the price for seeing differently.
The sacred rebel does not always change the world by winning. Sometimes she changes it simply by refusing to stand where she has been told to stand.
Waltzing With Matilda's 