MAJOR ARCANA

The Hermit Tarot Meanings

When it comes to some of the wisest and most philosophical people in history, they all share a common thread and that is that they prioritised time where they could just sit and think. It’s something we very rarely do these days, just carve out some time to think about the world, our lives, who we are, and what it all means.

That’s the lesson that The Hermit brings to us, a reminder that sometimes we can get too caught up in the external world and we can lose ourselves or at least lose touch with our core essence. Let’s dive into The Hermit a little more and see what meanings and guidance we can get from this card when it pops up in our spreads.

The Hermit Upright Meanings

In the upright position, The Hermit is a card of introspection, giving ourselves permission to spend time and energy just thinking about things. This time to ourselves can unlock the wisdom that we would never achieve from simply living our lives trying to get from one day to the next. The main upright meanings of The Hermit are:

Inner guidance
Isolation
Self-discovery
Understanding

When The Hermit appears in the upright position it is a sign that we are either in need of this alone time, or we have done that work and now we’re ready to allow our findings to guide us along our next path.

The Hermit Reversed Meanings

In the reversed position, The Hermit can symbolise a feeling of being lost, confused, and out of touch with who we are and our personal core values. We have lost our way along our current path and we need to take a step back to really understand why that might have happened and how we can find our way back. The Hermit is a very active card, so it requires you to do the work in order to get the desired results. Some other reversed meanings for The Hermit are:

Loneliness
Isolation
Exclusion
Rejection
Outsider

Although all of those reversed meanings appear negative, it actually depends on how you look at them. If you are feeling any of these things and The Hermit appears in your spread, it may be an invitation to assess those feelings and see if they are truly factual, or a manifestation of our current mental state.

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Reading The Hermit in a Tarot Spread

Like I mentioned above, The Hermit is a very active card, it requires a lot of participation on your end. Your personal and spiritual development is all down to you, even if you find teachers and influencers along the way, your journey is your own and how deep you go with it is a choice that only you can make.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways we can frame The Hermit when it comes up in our spreads and what kinds of benefits and nutrients we can gain from it.

The Hermit as An Invitation

The Hermit is a big invitation and one that we can’t be on the fence about, we either take it with both hands or walk away from it. With The Hermit symbolising introspection, when it comes up in a spread framed as an invitation, we are being invited to look inwards rather than for external solutions.

For The Hermit, this invitation could be the following:

An invitation to look at your core values and how they were created. Were they based on someone else’s teachings? Do they still vibe with the person you are right now?
An invitation to remove yourself from the noise of society and allow more space in your daily thoughts for wandering and exploration.
An invitation to allow your inner wisdom to guide you forward along your personal development journey

The Hermit as Sage Advice

When we think about the type of advice we might get from The Hermit, I like to think of the card as a Buddhist monk, a philosopher or another figure that represents divine wisdom. The type of advice The Hermit offers is designed to make you think deeper and without too much influence or guidance from others. That way, your thoughts are 100% your own.

Some advice The Hermit may offer is:

Don’t allow your own beliefs and values to be led by others. Know your own mind and be confident within it.
Time alone doesn’t have to be lonely or isolating, those things are a state of mind that we have the power to shift and transform.
If you feel like you don’t belong, look at why you may feel that way. Are others actively making you feel that way, or is it a narrative you have subconsciously created for yourself as a form of protection?

The Hermit as a Lesson

The biggest lesson The Hermit teaches us is that in order to grow as an individual, we have to allow ourselves to dive fully into our own minds and trust our own thoughts. It’s a lesson in the benefits of self-discovery and self-exploration.

Some lessons that The Hermit may offer you are:

To learn how to create space for thinking about the bigger things in life and how we can use that wisdom in our daily lives.
To find out who we truly are and start to live as our authentic selves.
To learn that we are all individual and unique and to embrace that and run with it as it helps build our personal wisdom.
The lesson of not being led blindly by people you think know more than you. Think for yourself and never hand over your intellectual power to others

The Hermit as a Redirection

The Hermit can be a big redirection as it often tells us that the answers are within when we were previously searching in our external world. We will always look in our external world for answers because it’s easier to comprehend, but the internal world can be the single most important vault for answers and clarity.

As a redirection, The Hermit could symbolise a need to:

Set some time aside to do some major inner work in order to find a way to move forward from here.
Entertain the idea that the issue may be your mindset and POV, rather than your actions or the actions of others.
Allow yourself to be led by your inner light, your personal core values and beliefs instead of being influenced by others

The Hermit - Number 9

In numerology the number nine is often a number signifying completion, idealism, wisdom and inspiration. We see a lot of these properties reflected in the imagery of The Hermit, from his lantern lighting his way to the figure of a wise old man cloaked in robes.

The Hermit isn’t the end of the Major Arcana however, so when it comes to the idea of ‘completion’ it isn’t always an end. It can be a pause in order to decide if something should end or if something should move on to be developed on further.

The Hermit - Virgo

Virgo is the astrological sign of The Hermit and it shares it’s grounded, earthy energy perfectly.

Virgos are all about grounded and well thought out transitions. They like to be organised and have all the boxes ticked before taking action. The Hermit is the same. That’s why he retreats into isolation, to block out external noise and give himself the best chance of grounding within himself. This then gives him the most authentic direction in which to move next.

The Hermit - The Sage

The Hermit falls into the archetype of The Sage due to the immense wisdom he finds once he has completed his time in isolation. The Sage is a figure that offers wisdom, not so much knowledge.

This wisdom is discovered from retreating inwards. It can only be found when you take the time to be alone with your thoughts and process them in all their glory. It’s this sage wisdom that The Hermit then uses to light his way out of the darkness.