Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana
The Hermit
wisdom · solitude · inner search · secret light · prudence
A reflective starting point
What is The Hermit asking you to look at?
Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.
Upright
Withdraw to gain clarity: the answer comes from within or from a private guide. Act with prudence and method.
At first sight
Withdrawal, reflection, prudence, the search for truth. It points to a period of introspection or to meeting a wise and discreet counsellor.
Within you
The need for silence in order to hear your own voice; the maturity that comes from experience worked through in solitude.
On the path
Path 20 from Chesed to Tiphareth, the letter Yod (the hand, 10), the seed from which all letters are born, and Virgo, mercurial earth: the secret of fertility hidden in matter. The inner light carried like a lantern into the world.
The shadow
Ill-dignified, it signals isolation, closing off, emotional miserliness, a refusal of life.
Reversed
In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.
Solitude lived as flight or exile; or a fear of silence that scatters you among other people.
In love, work and spirit
Love. A period of reflection; a need for personal space, bonds that ask for depth more than intensity.
Work. Study, research, specialisation; working independently and meticulously.
Spirit. The inner hermitage: guarding the seed of light that fertilises the world.
Correspondences
Yod י · path 20 (Chesed – Tiphareth) · Earth · Virgo
Crowley's note
Crowley's Hermit gazes at a lantern with the Sun at its centre, accompanied by a tamed Cerberus; the Orphic egg wrapped by the serpent, the field of wheat and the form of the spermatozoon allude to life transmitted in secret.
From the journal
Thoth Tarot
Symbolism