Symbols - What does heaven look like
Suspension
Any form of suspension whether this is hanging from a cross or swinging in a tree [tree of life] or suspension half way between heaven and earth implies a person who is an intermediary between the spiritual world and the physical world and a person who is deeply mystical in character.
It can also occasionally be used to describe a person able to have out of body experiences, but this usage is not quite correct as the more precise meaning is someone who is permanently in a state of suspension between the two realms.
A person thus suspended is, in some sense, isolated from mundane matters and ordinary influences. In effect this is mystical isolation.
Occasionally the symbolism is combined with that of sacrifice. Odin for example sacrificed himself by hanging from the tree of life.
The implication of this is that sacrifice, self denial, continence and suffering are often part of this state. Where the suspension is dreamy and inactive there is often a sort of negative sense of a Utopian dream world that neither helps the spiritual world nor the physical realm – the person is in between but achieves nothing. So there is a danger in this state.
The symbolism is incorporated in that of The Hanged man.
Observations
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- Braveheart - Parallel bars
- Burst appendix
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- Crowley - 12 The Hanged Man
- Degas - Miss Lalla
- Ernst, Max - Approaching Puberty 1921
- George Harrison - Beware of Darkness
- George Harrison - While my guitar gently weeps
- Hammond, Bill - Jingle Jangle Morning
- Hush a bye baby
- Kabir - Between the conscious and the unconscious
- Mallarme, Stephane - The Window
- Mirabai - The Bhil woman
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from In praise of King Fakhrod-Din
- Poetic Edda - Sayings of the High One [Odin's sacrifice]
- Rider-Waite - 12 The Hanged Man
- Shabistari, Mahmud - The Gulshan-i raz - Actions give rise to endless multiplicity
- Spinning
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 08 - 5 Head downwards
- Tissot - Women of Paris - The Circus lover
- Tolstoy, Leo - Confessions - The thread of life
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - My mother dandled me and sang