The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: The Hermit, Part II

When he appears in a tarot spread The Hermit, true to his Virgo associations, can give the reader a wealth of information. If the querent draws this card as a significator or its position in the spread suggests that The Hermit is the querent, the most obvious interpretation is solitude. When this

will happen depends on its placement. Whether it will be a voluntary, pleasant, and productive solitude, or an aching loneliness that withers the soul and warps the spirit, or something in between depends on whether the card is upright or reversed, and what the cards around it say. It could also mean that this person is, was, or will be a seeker, the possessor of arcane knowledge, a teacher and guide for others, and/or ecstatically reunited with the Life Force.

It may indicate the appearance of a teacher or someone with advice or a piece of information. If the card falls in the past, check the cards around it to see if the querent accepted the teacher. If it is in the future and upright, encourage the client to do whatever it takes to learn from this person, and to heed his advice, no matter how crazy he seems. If the card is reversed, the teacher or the advice is unreliable.

Other meanings for this card are: analyzing a situation and proceeding with care, a journey, a vision quest, or the completion of a cycle.

My husband insists that this card reversed also means being trapped in an isolated and possibly dangerous situation of your own making.

The Hermit is a familiar character in the hero’s journey, but he’s usually not the hero–for obvious reasons. However, in his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson’s hero is a writer who has contracted leprosy and is deserted by his family and friends. When he is transported to a land of health and healing he refuses to believe in the very powers that healed him, thus alienating himself from everyone there as well. Thomas Covenant is that odd duck who is both a shadow hermit and a hero.

Silas Marner is a hero who begins George Eliot’s novel as a shadow hermit, a bitter miser whose gold is stolen. But he receives a gift more valuable than the gold he lost in the form of golden haired Eppie, whom he raises as his own. In the process he regains his happiness and the link with his community.

Babba Yagga is a main character who is wise and lives alone in her house on chicken legs surrounded by a fence of bones and skulls; but I can’t see her as a hero. She’s more of a shadow mentor. The heroes in her stories are the unfortunate people who come to her for help. Babba Yagga’s help is never pleasant.

The Hermit is usually a mentor.

Yoda, the Jedi master who trained Luke Skywalker, lived alone in the middle of a swamp.