Hanged Man (Sequence 0)

The Hanged Man is the summit of the path, to which lead the seeker of dangerous secrets, the listener of whispers, the shadow recluse, the bishop of flesh, the shepherd of foreign souls, the black knight, the split templar, the unholy prophet, and the angel who fell of its own will.

The summit's symbolism is twofold, and it explains its name more precisely than any authorities:

Bearing of sin, also known as the scapegoat — the Hanged Man takes upon himself the damage and death intended for others, redirecting the enemy's main blows onto himself; the True Creator bears the sins of the world, which is why his believers turn out innocent in the eyes of the world and can be neither found guilty nor punished by forces such as those wielded by the Overseer;

Sacrifice — by sacrificing himself, he obtains unconditional hope.

He has four authorities, and all of them are about corruption and darkness:

Darkness — unlike the darkness of the path of the same name, the Hanged Man's darkness is absorbing and corrupting the heart: whoever enters his shadows without proper protection or standing will quickly degenerate and turn into a corrupted monster;

Mutations — the power from which also derives power over flesh and blood: out of nothing, right in the darkness, he creates countless corrupted creatures endowed with the ability to resurrect, and to some extent influences the change of all things, which partially overlaps with the Jester's authority;

Shadows — he becomes the undivided lord of the Shadow World, and his Divine Kingdom is this entire world as a whole, and the shadows themselves carry concealment within them;

Degeneration — the Hanged Man is the corrupt nature of all living things: a shadow rises and clings to the target's back, and from the depths of its own soul ever new shadows surface, merging with it and reshaping its appearance.

The canon draws a subtle but important distinction here. The degeneration of the Progenitor of Chaos is a comprehensive corruption of body, mind, and spirit, while the Hanged Man's degeneration is corruption of oneself by oneself. And if the Hanged Man is the corrupt nature of all living things, then the Abyss is an environment that inevitably brings everyone who finds themselves in it to degeneration: it not only causes corruption but also creates it.

The fifth thing that belongs to him is Blight: defiled by the Sea of Chaos, he is capable of defiling anything.

From the composition, the canon names a single position, and it is not a substance: the Shadow World itself — a different dimension intersecting with the Mirror one.

The ritual of ascension places the bearer on the brink beyond which one usually does not return, and it has two requirements at once: the body must not sink, and the mind must not fall.

And so the path ends with the same device with which it began. The Seeker of Secrets grew from knowledge that is dangerous to know; the summit is taken by walking on that which cannot be walked upon.