Originally Posted by
Athanor
[Just to mention that, before posting it, I’ve added a few comments to my reply which was written before reading your latest post about going along with other people and ending up in a job which you didn’t like. You now feel optimistic about your future goals and this is very positive.
However, if this dream actually FOLLOWED your decision to leave your current job, in my experience, it probably is still trying to balance out an overall attitude, perhaps saying in effect that you may not yet be prepared enough in some basic way to move ahead with your new goals in an effective enough way.
If the dream happened BEFORE you actually decided to leave your job, then it was probably showing that a change in your “suspended state” was about to happen which would allow you to move ahead more productively overall.
In this case, you can probably skip the interpretation below!]
Although it would usually be best to have additional general background information about you as well as other recent events just before this upsetting dream in order to provide an accurate interpretation, a few additional ideas can be tried out to see if they might fit your personal circumstances at least to some extent.
Dreams communicate with us by using metaphors and similes that move us emotionally in some way.
For example, being outside mostly in the dark in a place you don’t know which is illuminated by only a bonfire, and being surrounded by people who you sort of half-know would usually tend to symbolize that the dream is taking you to an area of your unconscious mind and to aspects of yourself (as JoannaB noted) with which you’re not very familiar in waking life.
This probably already creates an uneasy tone in the dream which is then of course greatly heightened by the brutal picture of the hanged man in the newspaper.
Each image in a dream is chosen very specifically to convey a message to the dreamer. To begin to unravel a given image’s meaning, it’s useful to clarify for oneself what the actual attributes of the object being shown are in outer life.
For instance, on one level, a newspaper is created by a collective entity and it provides a broad range of “good and bad news”, including currently useful and/or interesting information to large numbers of people.
Symbolically, a lot of “energy” and “interest” is also tied to the image of a newspaper because a large amount of energy and money is expended in tracking down stories, creating the physical output of a newspaper etc. etc. And until recently, very large amounts of money (energy) were received by newspapers in the form of advertising revenue.
Also to follow up this idea even further, in your dream, a newspaper appears, and not, say, a parchment on which strange letters are written, nor is it a holy scroll containing spiritual wisdom etc.
So by reflecting on these and other ideas about what a newspaper is, one conclusion could be that the newspaper in your dream might mostly symbolize information being provided by the dream about outer, everyday ways in which you interact with the world in general in a practical way.
But in this case, the information provided is unfortunately very upsetting in the story of a man who committed suicide by hanging himself.
Naturally, it’s the dream itself which is posing you the question "A hanged man means only 2 things, what are they?", and then the dream ends, suggesting it’s really up to you as an ego to unravel this knotty question (no pun intended).
And of course, you’ve started on your way by seeking out some advice about dreams on this website.
So everything seems to hinge on what the image of the hanged man symbolizes.
One thing (or two?) that a “hanged man means” is that he is “dead and suspended”.
Therefore, as JoannaB touched on, some important aspect of yourself could be “dead/suspended”; that is, something crucial to your well-being may be in a “suspended state” and is not “alive” in everyday life at this time.
The darkness and unpleasantness of the basic image possibly shows that the absence of this something that should be “active” and “alive” in you could apparently cause very negative consequences on your overall life if not “resuscitated”.
In this connection, apparently one underlying “reason” or “cause” for suicide is a kind of desperate, unconscious and misplaced desire to find “renewal” and “rebirth” so that one could leave a distressing situation and “start again”.
In this approach to your dream, the idea of the wholeness of your life possibly being affected adds to and raises the symbolic meaning of the hanged man to a higher level.
For example, “hanging” has been connected with various religious practices and gods. For instance, Christ was crucified or “hung” on a cross, and in ancient times, Germans hung up their prisoners in honor of Wotan.
But of course there exists a tone of “negative deification” in these particular images because, for instance, the Romans said something along the lines of “If you want to be King of the Jews, here you go!”, but in an obviously cruel and negative way.
Although I’m probably not making this very clear, to sum up “hanging”, it symbolically can mean that one has been sort of elevated into an ethereal “spiritual realm” but therefore has lost touch with earthy reality too much of the time, or could do so if certain attitudes and practises aren’t changed over time.
In a practical way, there is a kind of “suspension in airy space” where little is actually worked at in down to earth terms on a day to day basis regarding the development of various innate skills and abilities as possibly symbolized by the various people in the dream who were in the man’s “group”.
Especially in a woman’s dream, this “suspended man” would tend to mean that her so-called “masculine” intelligence and intellect were not active enough in making personal decisions.
Also, there might be a lack of initiative, assertiveness, focus and perseverance in going after what she really wants in life, possibly resulting in various important potentials not being realized in actual outer life.
So if you’re a female, your “inner man” might be at the breaking point from not being pad enough attention to and could effectively “disappear” as a potentially helpful figure in your unconscious mind.
A male having such a dream might have “abandoned” a vital part of his life in order to avoid giving up, for example, a cushy job at the long term expense of not becoming who he really could become overall as a person.
Although both females and males can benefit from the work of analyst Marion Woodman, she’s especially helpful in clarifying the role on the “inner man” in the dreams of women. A very good overview of her work which is valuable for both sexes can be found in “Body and Soul: Honoring Marion Woodman”.
If by chance, a lack of overall assertiveness might be an issue, books like “Asserting Yourself” by Bower and Bower and “Your Perfect Right” by Alberti and Eammons would be very helpful.
Anyway, I hope that these additional ideas can be helpful in further unravelling the personal message contained in your dream.
