9 - The Hermit Tarot Card
The Hermit is tarot card number 9, although it is the 10th card of the Major Arcana because the 1st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).
Some
older accounts of the tarot refer to "The Hermit" as
"Father Time", a representation that may convey the wisdom gained over the
passing of time even more naturally than the modern Hermit representation.
The Hermit in the tarot deck is usually depicted as an elderly
gentleman with a long white beard and a staff. He is often
shown standing on the top of a mountain (if a snow-capped mountain,
this is to further emphasize the height of learning he has attained via solitude and experience).
When The Hermit appears in a tarot spread he may be indicating
that we should put our experience and learning to work for
us in our present situation. Alternatively, the hermit may be indicating
that unfinished business from our past should be completed
before we can move into the future with confidence.
Some specific terms associated with The Hermit tarot
card include:
- wisdom
- meditation
- search for truth
- the wisdom of the ages
- knowledge
- discipline
- completion
- contemplation
- introspection
Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.
More about the Major Arcana
The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the
most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major
Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical
order (beginning with 0 - The
Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment
that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".
Some texts also include meanings for "reversed
cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both
order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that
it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in
the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation
of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple
mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.
Click here for more Major Arcana cards
