Le Pendu

From Alejandro Jorodowsky’s book “The Way of Tarot”

I am in this position because I wish to be. It is I who cut off the branches. I have freed my hands of the desire to seize, to own, to cling. Without abandoning the world, I have retired from it. With me you can find the will to enter the state where the will no longer exists, where words, emotions, relations, desires no longer bind you. To detach myself, I have cut all bonds save the one joining me to Consciousness.

“I have the sensation of eternally falling toward myself. I am looking for myself through the labyrinth of words. I am he who thinks who is thoughts. I am not my feelings; I observe them from an intangible sphere where peace alone reigns. At an infinite distance from the river of desires, I know only indifference. I am not my body but the one who dwells inside it. to reach myself, I am a hunter who sacrifices his prey.

I find burning action in infinite non action. I cross through pain to discover the strength of sacrifice. Little by little I undo everything in me that could be called “me”. I reenter myself incessantly as if into an enchanted forest. I own nothing, I grasp nothing, I know nothing, I want nothing, I can do nothing. [...]

I am nothing more than the beat of the heart that propels beauty toward the borders of creation. I become peaceful gentleness in all pain, ceaseless gratitude, the door that leads victims to ecstasy, the sloping path on which we slide towards the heights, the living light that circulates in the darkness of the blood.”