THE ARCHETYPAL IMAGES OF 9/11
The Falling Man of 9/11, one image in the midst of thirteen taken by New York Times photographer Richard Drew during the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, shows a horrifying image of one of the "jumpers": a then-unidentified man plunging headfirst from the top of the towers. This man was later identified by a BBC investigative documentary discussed in the last entry here as Jonathan Briley, the videographer at Windows on the World, the penthouse restaurant atop the North Tower.
That this image was chosen out of thirteen shows what hold universal archetypal images have on the collective consciousness of humanity, in this case, that of the photographer who took them. Below this photograph and the poignant poem that accompanies it by Amy Farnesworth, you will find two images from among the twenty-two cards of the Greater Arcana of the Tarot explored in Psalm 119 of the Bible, portraying two universal archetypes directly relevant to 9/11 and to this iconic image.
The first is The Tower, in which a turret is being struck by lightning, hurling two figures headfirst to the ground far beneath: one bareheaded, indicating a common person, and one wearing a crown, symbolizing government authority. This prefigures the attack on the people of America and the world by dark forces now in the process of being revealed, that have also toppled legitimate government authority thruout this planet. These dark forces are themselves about to be toppled by massive lightning flashes of truth coming from benevolent cosmic sources, as well as from those who embody these benevolent cosmic forces here on earth.
The second is The Hanged/Suspended Man, in which a male figure is being hung by one ankle with one knee bent, creating the shape of a figure "4", seen prominently in the image of The Falling Man of 9/11. Significantly, this archetype's overt meaning is self-mastery thru the attainment of inner peace while one's life is literally being turned upside down; its more hidden meaning is martyrdom or human sacrifice -- as was being practiced by the abovementioned dark forces about to be revealed -- on September 11, 2001. -- REC
For the Falling Man
I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky,
in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.At first I thought you were debris
from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall
or fuselage but then I realized
that people were leaping.I know who you are, I know
there's more to you than just this image
on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—
I know you were someone's lover, husband, brother
father. Last night you read stories
to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep
next to your wife. Perhaps there was small
sleepy talk of the future.Then,
before your morning coffee had cooled
you'd come to this; a choice between fire
or falling.How feeble these words, billowing
in this aftermath, how ineffectual
this utterance of sorrow.We can see plainly
it's hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths
—but we can't help ourselves—how I wish
we could trade them for something
that could really have caught you.-- Amy Farnesworth