A Journey of Solitude: The Hermit's Tale
Hello fellow tarot lover and enthusiast!
If you are here for the International Tarot Day Blog Hop, then you're at the right place! A million thanks to Bree Ferguson, the amazing woman who organized this blog hop and made all this possible! Please be sure to check out her blog Nym's Divination!
Did you enjoy Rhi's blog post on Strength? Pretty awesome, wasn't it? Now make yourself a cup of tea and get ready to "quiet down" to journey with the Hermit. ;)
In silence, the forest awaited me. I heard its call, its eerie fluorescent purple glow shimmering in the distance, its song drifting towards me, gently brushing against my hair, pulling me to its beating heart. I bent to dodge the teeth of a snail, its slime dripping in slow motion. The orb of light in the palm of my hand shone brighter; its radiance stretched out, plastered against time and space. The closer I was to the heart of the wood, the further away I was from reality. Was I human, a singularity, an organism, or was I part of the wood?
The Hermit enjoys solitude. When he has need for it, he withdraws from the noise and static of the physical world, bidding his family and friends good-bye so he could remain with his own thoughts. In a way, he is very similar to the High Priestess, but so very different. High Priestess represent the inner knowing, the part of us that channels the wisdom of our spirit. It is a state of being that requires awareness to activate. The Hermit, on the other hand, is a mentality, or a choice. One chooses to retreat and withdraw from one's environment to embark on a spiritual quest, to enter a different context, to embody a different attitude, to obtain a higher or alternative perspective.
As I settled next to swirls and brambles, shrubberies that intertwined to create curious silhouettes: symbols and intricate patterns that I could not name. They resembled the strands of my DNA. They shifted and rustled softly in the breeze, gesturing for me to sit and enter its consciousness. So I did. And I listened to its non-sound, its silence. Laws of physics didn't apply here. My fellow men and women could not follow me here. This was my own world, a distilled dimension of my beingness, summoned into form to encompass me.
The Hermit is an important archetype. If you're an introvert, you probably understand the need for this archetypal embodiment very well. Withdrawing into your own space or needing your own space is probably a common occurrence. The truth is, the world tires you out with its noise very quickly and you need to recharge your battery. Solitude comes easy because it's essential to your existence. But even if you're an extrovert and you are naturally energized by being around people or activities, you still need to find the space and time to be "alone", but "not lonely", detaching yourself from the social roles that you play and the considerations that occupy your mind when you are engaging with the world. Being the Hermit isn't about shutting the world out; it's about making that inner journey, traveling past all the psychological and emotional layers and returning to your essence, or your spirit. Looking through the lens of spirit, without filter, without the buzz in your psyche will grant you the elevated perspective that you need to extract wisdom from and finish the lessons you are currently undergoing so that you may move forward into the next chapter of your narrative.
All is quiet. I don't know how long I have been here, but I feel the iridescent wood tugging at me, the vines and shrubs wrapping themselves around my ankles. Wake up, they say. Time to leave; time to move on. "Leave?" I say to them, incredulous. And give up this peaceful quiet? I understand the urgency; this isn't a place that I can stay forever. And I almost got up to my feet, ready to walk out of this magical space, the space of my heart, but I hesitated. My feet weighted down by my reluctance. I feel them. The voices. People. People I know. They are trying to reach me. But I'm fine being here. I am much better off being here. Here, I see things that they don't. I am elevated. Who do they think they are to judge me?
As the saying goes, too much of anything is nearly always bad. There is such a thing as too much Hermit-ing. The shadow side of the Hermit archetype is the refusal to engage with the world. Once he is under the illusion that he is better off in this "elevated state of consciousness", he is trapped. The pursuit of spirit is not an ethereal one. In this lifetime, a spirit exists within a body. To be truly alive and to truly honour the journey that your spirit makes, you have to be inside your body. Your body belongs to the physical plane, and so do you. Yes, you are multidimensional, and one of the dimensions that you exist in is the physical plane. To refuse to participate in this realm is to refuse life itself. As human, spirit cannot exist without the body. Spirit needs its space, but it cannot exist in a vacuum.
nameless faces, shapeless places
heedless races, empty phrases
when spirits whisper,
when souls touch
and align--close your eyes
and dissolve
into empty spaces
Before you leave, please enjoy this playlist titled "Spirits" that I made 2 years ago. Listening to it again, it's exceptionally "Hermity". The photos taken above feature The LInestrider' Tarot by Siolo Thompson Published by Llewellyn 2016.
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I hope you all have been enjoying this blog hop! Please see Oephebia's blog at Tarot and Kitties by Oephebia for the next next amazing blog in the hop. Thank you for reading!
