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The Hermit Card Meaning | Tarot Card Meanings

May 6, 2021 | Learn Tarot

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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.

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Upright

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.

Reversed

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. For example, if you feel like an outsider, is being an outsider really a negative thing? If those around you make you feel like an outsider, maybe they’re the problem, not you. Try and see all angles of your current situation and use The Hermit to really assess those feelings, and explore where they come from and where they could possibly lead to.

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Reading The Hermit in a 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.

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 we 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.

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?

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 mind 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.

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

In summary…

The Hermit is one of my favourite cards because it symbolises the opportunity to do some serious spiritual work. Building our wisdom can be a turning point in our lives. People that ‘find’ spirituality often discover a complete u-turn in their way of thinking, which then bleeds into their actions and intentions. This card can be a beautiful catalyst for a brand new chapter in your life.

Tarot Exploration: The Aces in the Tarot

Jan 25, 2021 | Learn Tarot

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Welcome to the first blog in the tarot exploration series, your mini-guide to the traditional tarot meanings! I thought the best place to start with this was right from the beginning, so we’re diving into the very first card in the minor arcana suits, the Aces.

All four of the minor arcana suits start with their very own Ace, the initial spark that sets the rest of the suit in motion. Tarot is all about cycles and the Ace marks the beginning of a brand new cycle within its suit, so for example, the Ace of Wands would be the spark of creativity or motivation or the Ace of Cups will be an emotional breakthrough or new phase in your emotional wellbeing.

We’re going to take a little look into some of the themes, meanings and indicators you can use to better understand the full meaning of the Aces, so you can get the most out of your readings.

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Aces and the number 1

Numerology plays a big part in the tarot and it can help us create even deeper meanings for each of the 78 cards. Because the Aces are the 1st card in a minor suit, it is associated with the number 1, which can tell us a lot about what the Ace is referring to.

*Remember, each of the four suits represents one of the four elements, so keep that in mind as we take a look at the meaning behind the number 1.

In numerology, the number 1 represents new beginnings, the spark of creation or inspiration, independence and leadership. It’s that very first step that is needed to get the ball rolling. With that in mind, we can apply those meanings to the four suits to get the full meanings of the Aces.

Ace of Wands = New beginning in the realm of fire

Ace of Swords = New beginning in the realm of air

Ace of Cups = New beginning in the realm of water

Ace of Coins = New beginning in the realm of earth

Say we were asking the cards to give us guidance on what we need to be prioritising right now and the Ace of Cups pops up. This could be interpreted as needing to consider the way we approach our emotional wellbeing or how we show love and compassion to others. We’re asked to embrace this new spark of emotional connection within us and run with it.

The purity of the Ace

When you have one of something, it becomes precious, unique and sacred. You, for example, there is only one of you in the world, so you are purely you, nobody else. If there was only one of a certain type of animal left in the world, it would be seen as sacred and in need of focus, care and protection. There is a feeling of this one thing being a true gift to us because we will never have anything else like it.

The same can be applied to the Aces. They are the pure energy of their suit. The Ace of Swords is the pure energy of air, the Ace of Coins is the pure energy of earth. It’s sacred and should be seen as a divine offering that will help us move forwards on our journey.

As a guidance reader, I always see an Ace as a sign that we’re starting on an exciting path, something that is going to change us or alter the way we see the world. It asks us to take a look around and notice anything that may seem like a sign or a gift from the universe.

An abundance of Aces

It is very possible that you’ll get a few Aces popping up in a single reading, but what does that mean? What messages do multiple Aces bring to us?

Four Aces = You may be entering into a life reset, where you really feel like things are starting again for the better. A decision or event has happened that has set you on a course for better and more positive things. Again, numerology comes into play, with the number 4 symbolising stability, so four aces show that you have a really strong foundation on which to start this new cycle.

Three Aces = Looking again at numerology, the number 3 is all about collaboration and growth, so three Aces within your spread shows that these three areas are working together in some way or you’ll need to combine these three elements in order to move forward. This could be leading to a positive or negative outcome, it all depends on the other cards in the spread.

Two Aces = The number 2 is about balance and that initial wisdom that comes after that spark of something new or after learning something new. With two Aces in the mix, there is a need to learn how to balance the two elements of the cards and take a look at what you can learn from this combination in your life. For example, if you receive the Ace of Coins and the Ace of Cups, then there may be a need to balance your emotional wellbeing and your material world such as your home life or health.

Of course, there are so many ways you can read the Aces and it all depends on the position and their relationship with the other cards in the spread. However, if you’d like to read all 78-cards fluently and using nothing but your intuition, make sure to take a look at my ‘Introduction to Energetic Tarot’ tarot course. 



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The Chariot Card Meaning | Tarot Card Meanings

Sep 22, 2020 | Learn Tarot

 

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The Chariot tarot meaning is one of trust, willpower and acceptance that we may not be able to do everything by ourselves. When we’re younger, we can’t wait to be an adult so we can take full control over our own lives, but once we reach adulthood, we realise that support from others is crucial.

Even for some seasoned professionals, reaching out for help and knowing when they’ve hit the ceiling, is something that is hard to accept. The Chariot then swoops in to remind you that we can all only get so far on our own and at some point, we will need to reach out and get help in order to reach the next stage in our growth.

Upright

In the upright position, The Chariot is a card of ambition and focus. It represents your drive to succeed and achieve your biggest hopes and dreams. However, it is also a lesson in humility and knowing when to celebrate your successes and when to be humble. The main upright meanings of The Chariot are:

  • Success

  • Focus

  • Ambition

  • Goals

  • Willpower

In the upright position, The Chariot is our chance to test our willpower and flex our control over a certain situation. It’s about understanding what drives us and why we do what we do. In life, we will have many different challenges and goals, but it’s only by pushing ourselves that we gain strength, wisdom and power.

Reversed

In the reversed position, The Chariot can symbolise a lack of control or feeling like you are not in charge of your own life. It can often show that you have a desire to take back the power to your own life or situation, but currently feel unable to do so.

  • Lack of direction

  • Instability

  • Egotistical

  • Lack of willpower

  • Opposition

When thinking about the reversed meaning of the Chariot, think about the upright meanings and their negative counterparts. In the upright position you have ambition, but reversed you have a lack of ambition or even laziness.



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Reading The Chariot in a spread

When The Chariot makes an appearance it shows that you’ve worked hard to get to where you are. You have pushed yourself in order to develop and grow and now you’ve reached a point where you need a leg up to reach that next level in life. Although it all sounds great, this is often a tough card to fully embrace, as a lot of us tend to feel like we shouldn’t need help to get to where we want to be or that we have the skills to do it all ourselves.

Re-framing The Chariot can help to reveal some really deep insight into our current mindset and feelings around our situation. Let’s have a look at some ways we can start to do this.

As an invitation

The Chariot marks the final chapter of the first cycle of life. It’s a great place to pause and take a breather to see how you should progress. This means that if we read it as an invitation, we can be confident that we’re being invited to take that pause, whatever that may mean for you in the context of your situation.

For The Chariot, this invitation could be the following:

  • An invitation to look at the bigger picture and see what you need to embrace in order to take that next step in your journey

  • An invitation to check in with your ego and make sure that you’re not giving it full control over your current trajectory

  • An invitation to see how external help and support could benefit you

  • An invitation to see if you’re being too overbearing or overpowering in certain areas of your life and where you could loosen your grip a little

As sage advice

As advice, The Chariot can help you take a look at the bigger picture, rather than focusing on the gritty details. Its guidance centres on trust and self-assessment, it asks us to take our ambition and ego out of the equation for a second so that we can gain clarity and decide on the best way to move forward.

Some advice The Chariot may offer is:

  • Assess your decision making progress and decide if you’re trusting your intuition enough in order to make harmonious and balanced choices

  • Accept support when it is offered to you

  • Don’t allow your ego to take control of your direction in life, check yourself when arrogance starts to creep in and taint your hard work

  • Refocus on your priorities and don’t be distracted by temporary whims and desires

As a lesson

At this stage of the Major Arcana, the main lessons we are working through are the ones we need to learn to become a wiser and more focused human. We’ve done a lot of internal work up to this point and now The Chariot is here to carry us to the next level of consciousness. We need to shed the last of our naive childishness and start to step into adulthood fully.

Some lessons that The Chariot may offer you are:

  • To learn to balance our desires and our commitments, so that we can take responsibility for our actions and move in the right direction

  • To trust others and know that support is all around us if we need it

  • To understand that we are not able to move through life on our own steam alone

  • The lesson of willpower and self-control

As a redirection

The Chariot has strong adventurous energy and it is a card of journeys, both internal and external. As a redirection, The Chariot can hint that we’ve been led astray by our vices and it’s time to get back on track. It can be a symbol that we need support in our next venture and that we are trying to do far too much on our own.

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

  • Seek out help from your external world

  • Find a more efficient way of achieving our goals

  • Celebrate how far you’ve come instead of how far you have left to go

  • Think about whether the direction you are currently moving in, is the right one for you and what you’re trying to achieve

In summary…

The Chariot is one that I see a lot with business and career-minded clients. It is often independence gone wild and symbolises that we need to take a moment to think about why we are so determined to do things on our own terms. This can be a great place to pause and delve back into previous cards like The High Priestess and The Hierophant, to see if there’s anything we need to re-align before we continue on our path.

How Does Tarot Reading Work: It’s All Energy Baby

Sep 8, 2020 | Learn Tarot

 

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A question I get asked a lot by people that are not in the witchy or spiritual community, is how does tarot actually work? It’s a tricky question to answer because there are multiple different ways tarot can work.

No tarot reader has the exact same experience when reading tarot and that’s hard to explain to those that believe that tarot is just about predicting the future.

Everything is energy

You may have seen a hashtag floating around talking about how energy is everything, but what does that actually mean in the real world? Well, everything in this world is created using energy and emits energy back out into the world.

Areas within quantum physics have looked at the universes varying sources of energy and Einstein was one of the scientists that realised that energy never disappears, it just gets recycled. Your energy, the energy that created you and the energy that you emit, is what we can use to read tarot.

Plus, with the theory of everything emitting energy, it makes sense that objects also emit energy, meaning that the cards themselves carry specific types of energy. We can use that energy output, to decide what the meaning of a spread is, but it’s not just the cards that tell us what’s happening, we have to give our input as well.

Learning a new language

When you decide to learn tarot card reading, you commit to learning a brand new language. I liken it to learning how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. You are effectively learning how to read and interpret imagery and energy.

Each of the 78 cards has its own meanings and sometimes these cross over due to their similarities. For example, The Empress and the Queen of Pentacles have a lot of corresponding properties. Another pair that cross over are Judgement and the Eight of Cups, with their idea of letting go of what is holding you back.

When we start to learn to read tarot, each of these cards represents a type of energy and a tiny section of a bigger story, which is why the more cards a spread holds, the more detailed the reading will be. We can get a lot from just one card, but we have to be the one that fills in the blanks. It’s up to us to use our role as interpreter and energy reader, to create a narrative from that card. We have to feel out the story it tells by using tools such as empathy, compassion and creativity.

Becoming an interpreter

If you’re reading tarot for other people, you need to be able to get a reading of their energy. Because I do all my readings online, the way I do this is by trying to get a read on the energy behind the question or enquiry. Nobody wakes up one morning when everything is going swimmingly and says ‘I feel like I should get a reading’ there is always a subconscious driver behind the need for a tarot reading, we just have to try and figure out what it is.

I always ask my clients for context around their question, I try and get a feeling of the emotional state they’re in and how they’re reacting to the situation. This is all energy reading. You are using the energy behind their words or if you’re on a video call, by their facial expressions or the inflexions when they talk.

Once you’ve got a grasp of the type of energy your client is emitting, then you move onto the cards. You can then put the meanings of the cards up against the question and compare the meanings to the energy the client is giving off.

I then ask myself some key questions:

  • Is the energy from this card complimenting the energy I’m getting from the client?

  • Is the energy from this card conflicting with the energy I’m getting from the client?

Complimentary energy means that there is clarity to the reading, the answers the cards are presenting are probably things the client already sort of knew or was expecting. If the energy is in conflict with the energy of the client, then it may be that there is some inner work that needs to be done to bring these things to light, or there are things that the client is avoiding or reluctant to admit to themselves.

What if you read the energy wrong?

When you first start tarot reading, I highly recommend asking your clients as many questions as possible, especially throughout the reading. This will help you pick up on any energy shifts and help you read the person a little better.

Of course, we are all only human and we may be off the mark a little sometimes, but if you can open a strong line of communication with your client, then it gives you more room to move things around and really figure things out together.

If the person you’re reading for tells you that you’re completely wrong and gets angry with you (I’ve NEVER had this just FYI) then it could be that the fault lies on their end. They may be really reluctant to accept the truth of their situation, or the cards may have called them out on their own bullshit. Remember, you’re reading their energy, so if that’s the energy they’re giving off, there must be something deeper going on. I find this happens most often in love readings, which is why I’m very careful when agreeing to any tarot reading around love.

Want an easy way to learn tarot reading that allows you to go at your own pace? Check out my online Tarot For Beginners Course!

 

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Reading Reverse Tarot Cards

Aug 11, 2020 | Learn Tarot

 

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Reading reverse tarot cards is something that many newbie tarot readers find daunting. Not only do you have to set out to learn all the meanings of the cards upright, but now you have to learn 78 brand new meanings for the same cards upside down. That’s a grand total of 156 different meanings to memorise!

However, here’s some good news for you. You don’t actually have to read reverse meanings if you don’t want to. It’s a technique that not all professional tarot readers use, myself included. For some, reading reverse just doesn’t feel right, or feel comfortable. For others, they can’t wait to see a reversed card in their spread. It’s all down to personal preference and your gut feeling towards reversals.

Why do we have reversals in tarot reading?

You may be wondering why we even have reversals if you don’t have to use them. Well, reading reversals adds an extra level of detail and meaning to your tarot readings. Sometimes it can be tricky to decide whether a card has a positive or negative connotation, but adding in reversals gives us that context.

As a whole, reversals are a relatively advanced tarot reading technique, so don’t worry if you don’t feel ready to dive into them straight away. However, if you do want to give them a go, here are a few reversal hacks to help you understand the reverse meanings of any card.

Internal or external?

Reversal cards can tell you when the card is an internal influence rather than and external one. If you’re using both upright and reverse cards, then upright will indicate that something is an external influence and reversed will be an internal influence.

For example:

 

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Here we have a simple three card, past, present and future spread. We’ve got The Fool in the past position, showing that we’ve recently taken the leap into something new, possibly a new career or hobby based off The Fool leading into The Magician. The Fool is upright, so this refers to the external world, so we’ve taken a practical course of action rather than just making a decision to do something. Similarly, the upright Magician in the present position shows that we are actively creating something.

Then we have the reversed card in the future position. If we use the context of internal or external, we can see that the Nine of Swords in the future is happening internally. The worry and anxiety locked within the Nine of Swords is completely internal, so it might be that this new creative venture you’ve set out on will cause some stress and anxiety further down the line.

Conscious or subconscious?

Another way of reading reversal cards, is to associate the reversal with the subconscious mind. This means that any upright cards are referring to our conscious and the reverse cards look at the deeply hidden realms of the subconscious. These reverse cards will reference aspects that we may not be aware even exist, but they will be a direct influence on the cards referring to the conscious mind.

 

Example:

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In this spread, we see we’ve got the Knight of Swords and the Eight of Wands in the past and present positions and both are upright cards. This could indicate a rush to get something completed or to get results from something we’ve been waiting for. We are consciously thinking about when this will happen and we’re probably feeling very impatient about the whole thing.

Then we have the future card as our reverse card, which in this case is the Four of Cups. This could indicate that we may receive what we’ve been waiting for, but subconsciously we’ll be disappointed with what we get. We may currently think we need this thing to be satisfied, hence our urgency to hurry up and receive it, but actually we still won’t be happy when we do finally get it.

A blockage or a bridge?

Another technique is to see the upright cards as bridges and the reversed as blockages, on our path moving forwards.

Think about a bridge in front of you, you need to cross it to get to where you want to be, but there’s a tree that’s fallen and it’s blocking you from crossing the bridge. The tree would be the reversed card and the bridge would be the upright card.

Example:

 

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In this spread we start off with our reversed card in the past position. We’ve got the Five of Swords showing deceit and hollow victories. With this in the reversed position, this was a block that was stopping you from moving forward. At one point you couldn’t take the next step, either because someone betrayed you, or you felt guilty about what you did to someone else. Remember this card is in the past position, so we’ve overcome this blockage.

Moving on from this, we enter into the Page of Wands in the present, so we’ve overcome this block and now we feel ready to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. This card, because it’s upright, will be a bridge we need to take in order to reach the next stage in our journey. This will lead us onto the future card, which is the Seven of Wands. With this card in mind, I get the feeling that the past card was referring to an external betrayal e.g. someone did something to us that knocked us down. Now we’re having to learn to stand our ground and fight off the negative habits and coping mechanisms we’ve developed because of this betrayal. This makes the Seven of Wands a card about finding your own strength and turns into a bridge to help us be stronger and distance ourselves further from our past trauma.

Movement or a delay?

We can also read the reversals in terms of movement. Imagine a current of energy flowing through each card, in the upright position this energy can flow freely allowing things to move forward smoothly. If this card is reversed, the energy stops flowing and we can’t go anywhere.

Example:

 

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Here we have another past, present and future spread, however this time we have two reversed cards to read, so things are a bit more complex. We start with the upright Wheel of Fortune, a card all about flow and cycles and the meaning of this will become a lot clearer as we read the other cards.

We are faced with a reversed Ace of Pentacles in the present position, a card that usually symbolises good fortune in career, home life and finances. However it’s reversed so our luck has changed. The nice constant flow of energy we saw in the Wheel of Fortune has meant that it’s moved out of our control and things are starting to go wrong. The reversed ace could be hinting at the sudden loss of finances or money troubles that have seemingly come out of nowhere. These money troubles are stopping you from being able to think about anything else.

The reversed Hierophant in the future position suggests that you might need the help of a professional or advice from someone that has been in the same position, however you’re probably reluctant to do so, maybe because of pride or vanity. You don’t want others to see that you’ve lost control of this aspect of your life. However in order to progress past The Hierophant, you need to seek this guidance and support or you’ll stay stuck where you are.

What do you need to do to turn the card upright?

A good reverse card hack is to look at the reversed card and think about what action you need to take in order to reach the upright meaning of the card.

For example if we had that reversed Four of Cups card from the second example above, what would you need to do in order to resolve that subconscious disappointment? How could you become aware of it? How could you drag it out of the depths of your subconscious and into your conscious mind, where you can start to work on it?

Or if we go back to the first example and the reversed Nine of Swords, how could we take action to address the internal worry and anxiety we’re feeling around this new venture of ours? Could we get outside help? Could we talk to someone about our fears and concerns? How can we take that internal angst and make it external?

The easiest way to get started with reversals, is to decide which context resonates with you the most, do you feel like the reversals are referring to the subconscious? Or maybe you feel more aligned with the theory of the reversed cards being a blockage?

Every tarot reader reads differently, so don’t feel like there is just one way. Experiment with these types of contexts and see which one feels the most natural.

Looking to learn how to read tarot from scratch? Why not join us on our Tarot For Beginners online course!

 

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