The Hermit

Arcana

Major Arcana — one of the twenty-two

Number

IX — card 9 of the sequence

Place in the sequence

tenth of twenty-two

Numbered alongside

the four Nines of the Minor Arcana

Upright

Soul-searching, introspection, inner guidance

Reversed

Isolation, loneliness, withdrawal

Listing position

card 10 of 78 as the deck is written out

Nothing on this page is calculated from your birth details or your name — the readings below are the traditional attributions for The Hermit, written plainly. The one part of it that is arithmetic, and exact, is how often a card of this kind actually turns up; that has its own section further down.

What The Hermit means

Withdraw for reflection. A short retreat — even a weekend — brings the clarity you've been chasing.

The Hermit is numbered IX, card 9 of the twenty-two, and Major Arcana cards are read as the large theme of a stretch of life rather than as the day-to-day events the four suits describe. A Minor card puts one subject — the work, the feeling, the argument, the money — at a particular stage; The Hermit names the chapter all of that is happening inside.

Its keyword line — soul-searching, introspection, inner guidance — is the short form for a grid, not a second meaning. When The Hermit lands beside two Minor cards, the usual reading is that it outranks them: they describe the events, The Hermit describes what the events are for.

The Hermit reversed

Isolation, loneliness, withdrawal

Reversed, The Hermit does not become its opposite. IX is the same chapter either way; the reversal turns it inward, or slows it, or points at the version of soul-searching that has gone wrong. On a chapter as large as IX that is a real difference in tone rather than a different card, which is why The Hermit reversed is written here as isolation, loneliness, withdrawal and not as the opposite of soul-searching.

Plenty of readers do not use reversals. Do that and The Hermit keeps one meaning, and the cards around it decide whether the chapter it names is arriving well or badly.

Where The Hermit sits in the sequence

The Hermit stands at IX, between Strength (VIII) and Wheel of Fortune (X). Read as a sequence — and most readers do read it as one — the twenty-two run from a first step to a completion, so The Hermit arrives after inner strength, bravery, compassion, focus and hands over to good luck, karma, life cycles, destiny.

The number IX

The Hermit is numbered 9, a single digit, so there is nothing to reduce: it is already the root the larger numerals reduce towards. Going the other way, The Moon (XVIII) reduces to IX, which makes The Hermit the plainer statement of a number that card carries in a more worldly form.

The same number reaches the Minor Arcana directly: the four Nines — Nine of Wands, Nine of Cups, Nine of Swords and Nine of Pentacles — are the day-to-day version of what The Hermit names as a theme. The near-arrival in four different subjects, against one chapter of a life.

Reading The Hermit in a spread

A Major in a three-card spread usually reframes the other two rather than sitting level with them. The Hermit in each position:

• First — the setting. The Hermit as the theme already in place behind the question: soul-searching, introspection, inner guidance.
• Second — the situation. IX as what the matter is actually about now, which generally outranks whatever the Minor cards beside it are describing.
• Third — the direction. The Hermit as a chapter opening rather than an event: the position where a Major reads least like a prediction and most like a description of where things are heading.

In a love reading

The Hermit describes the theme a relationship is inside rather than an event inside it — soul-searching, introspection, inner guidance applied to two people. That is a broader claim than any Cups card makes, and a vaguer one, which is why IX usually wants the cards either side of it before it says anything useful.

In a career reading

On a work question The Hermit answers about the direction rather than the task: not whether the report gets filed but whether the chapter you are filing it in is the one you meant to be in.IX on its own will not tell you what to do on Monday; read it with a Pentacles or Wands card beside it and that card supplies the practical half The Hermit leaves out.

How often The Hermit actually comes up

This is the part of a card page that can be checked, so it is worth stating exactly. Three cards drawn from seventy-eight means any named card — The Hermit included — appears in one three-card spread in 26, or 3.8% of the time. No card in the deck is rarer than another, and any page telling you its own card is unusual to draw is wrong about arithmetic rather than about tarot.

• At least one of the twenty-two Major Arcana appears in 63.6% of three-card spreads. A "big card" showing up is the ordinary case, not a sign.

Reversals do not change any of that. Whether The Hermit lands upright or reversed is a separate coin from whether it lands at all, which is worth remembering when a reversed card feels like it was aimed at you.

The full set of these figures, including what the most-feared cards actually add up to, is on the tarot page.

The Hermit — common questions