The Hermit and the Art of Withdrawing

We live in an era that treats “socializing” and “climbing upward” as absolute political correctness. In this era, receiving no message notifications signals marginalization; having no dinner engagements over a long holiday is seen as desolation.

So when Card Nine, The Hermit, appears in a spread, many people’s first reaction is instinctive recoil. That ash-gray robe and the stark, forbidding snowscape all around seem to foretell abandonment by the crowd. But in the tarot’s depth-psychological context, The Hermit has never been a passive punishment. On the contrary, it is the most privileged, proactive stance in the entire Major Arcana: “I choose not to participate.”

When the artist Pamela rendered this elder, she placed him on the peak of a frigid, snowbound mountain. Snow carries a dual metaphor, visual and auditory: it covers the world’s chaotic colors while absorbing ambient noise. The old man is slightly hunched—not from age, but from an extreme inward focus.

But what truly draws the eye is the lamp he holds high in his right hand. Burning inside its shade is not ordinary orange fire but a brilliant hexagram—the Star of Solomon—symbolizing an ancient, profound inner spiritual light.

The emergence of this card often means that your current external environment—whether a complicated relationship with too many voices, or a workplace saturated with gossip and factionalism—has severely overdrawn your spiritual senses. At this point, whether trying to loudly claim your voice or forcing a smile to conform to the rules, you will feel a deep nausea.

The guidance The Hermit offers at this moment is crude and effective: cut the power, immediately.

It is “keeping distance” in relationships, “keeping things strictly professional with no emotional entanglement” at work, “turning off social media for three days” in life. This is not escape. It is an urgently necessary “inward exile.” In those pitch-black psychological nights where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, no one can point the way for you. You must take back that lantern you once used to illuminate others, to draw their attention—and use it only to light the single step beneath your own feet.

When we resist this guidance out of fear of solitude, we inevitably slide into the Hermit’s shadow side.

You will find that, though you mingle in the liveliest gatherings, though you share a bed with your partner, you feel a profound “loneliness in the marrow”—so deep even breathing stings. That is because you entrusted yourself to external noise, and the external world cannot give you answers. The other shadow side is mutating “the Hermit” into arrogant isolation—not retreating to seek inner truth, but cloistering yourself out of contempt and resentment toward others, dressing up forced isolation as noble detachment, sealing shut the last door connecting you to the world.

Look carefully: though the Hermit turns his back on the clamorous world, the lantern in his hand still provides a faint reference point for those climbers below who have not yet reached the summit. The true Hermit does not hate the world—he simply needs enough time to digest it.

If you are currently gripped by this card’s pull, do not rush to ask “When will that person come looking for me?” or “Where is my benefactor?”

Before sleep tonight, try asking yourself this in profound silence: “If I turned off my phone screen, if no one were watching or judging my life, then in this moment, within my own lantern… what desire still glows?”

Admit it. You need an undisturbed winter.