The Hermit Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed

Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No

One lantern, one staff, one man on a mountain in the dark. The Hermit climbed above everybody else’s noise to think clearly, and the light he’s carrying reaches about three feet in front of him.

Most people meet this card at the moment they realize nobody else actually has their answer.

Welcome to the tenth entry in my tarot glossary.

The Fool leapt, The Magician built, The High Priestess listened, The Empress grew, The Emperor framed it, The Hierophant taught it, The Lovers chose, The Chariot drove, Strength gentled the lion, and now the tarot deck asks you to go sit with yourself.

Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what he means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish him, his planet, his zodiac sign, timing, whether he leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling him for clients.

Stay to the end to see what this card holds for anyone grieving in private.

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What Does The Hermit Tarot Card Actually Mean?

The Hermit is card nine of the Major Arcana, the point where the soul stops asking everyone else and goes looking on its own.

Nine is the last single digit, completion just before the turn. Everything learned from the first eight cards gets carried up a mountain and examined in private.

Picture wisdom with the door shut and the kettle on.

The light that reaches one step

In the Rider Waite Smith image, a grey-robed figure stands on a snowy peak holding a lantern in one hand and a staff in the other, head bowed, eyes down.

His lamp holds a six-pointed star, and it lights almost nothing.

That restraint is the entire teaching. You’re given enough to take the next step, never enough to see the whole descent.

The figure evolved out of an older card called Time, shown with an hourglass rather than a lamp, which tells you what this solitude is really made of.

Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads him as withdrawal that serves a purpose, retreat chosen rather than suffered.

What Are the Symbols on The Hermit Tarot Card?

Pamela Colman Smith stripped this card down to almost nothing.

What’s left does heavy work, since every object here belongs to someone travelling light on purpose.

• The lantern: inner guidance made portable. Wisdom you can carry, limited to what one hand will hold.
• The six-pointed star inside it: the Seal of Solomon, as above so below. His light is the same light as the sky’s, scaled to fit a lamp.
• The staff: the authority of experience, leaned on rather than waved around. Same wood as The Magician’s wand, put to humbler use.
• The grey cloak: anonymity by choice. Nothing about this figure is asking to be looked at.
• The bowed head: attention turned inward. He isn’t scanning the horizon, since the horizon has nothing he needs.
• The snowy summit: altitude already earned. He climbed here, which is why the view no longer impresses him.
• The white beard: years of it, patience that accumulated rather than arrived.
• The grey sky: no sun, no stars, no weather. Conditions that give you nothing to react to.
• The number nine: the solitary digit, completion standing by itself before anything begins again.

What Do the Colors on The Hermit Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?

Color does quiet work on the mind before a single meaning gets read.

Psychologists have long tied specific hues to specific responses, and this palette deliberately refuses to stimulate you.

How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The Hermit?

No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either protect The Hermit’s quiet or break into it.

This is called adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.

When The Hermit gets amplified

An amplifier speaks his language. Quiet beside quiet, depth beside depth.

• The Hermit + The High Priestess: intuition at full volume, and not one voice competing with it.
• The Hermit + Four of Swords: a retreat with permission attached, rest rather than hiding.
• The Hermit + Eight of Pentacles: the solitary hours nobody sees that build the actual skill.

When The Hermit gets diminished

A diminishing card interrupts. It crowds, hurries, or turns chosen solitude into something colder.

• The Hermit + Three of Cups: a social calendar with no gaps, plus no room left to hear yourself.
• The Hermit + Eight of Wands: news arriving faster than you can sit with any of it.
• The Hermit + Five of Pentacles: solitude curdling into exclusion, alone without having chosen it.

When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.

Is The Hermit a Yes or No Card?

Not yet, and ask yourself first.

The Hermit is one of the few cards that flatly declines to answer, which is its answer.

He points the question back at you, since the information you need is already in your possession rather than anyone else’s.

Reversed, the no gets firmer, usually because isolation is distorting the view rather than clearing it.

In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card gets to choose on your behalf.

This card would argue that any yes worth having has to come from you.

What Is The Hermit’s Timing in a Tarot Reading?

Timing under The Hermit stretches, which frustrates people who wanted a date.

Virgo rules here, and Virgo would rather get it right than get it soon.

Expect a season of waiting, with movement arriving once the thinking is actually finished.

Nine, and not a day sooner

Virgo season is the traditional window, roughly late August into September, when the year turns reflective.

Nine is the other timing clue, showing up as nine days, nine weeks, or nine months depending on the question.

When I see The Hermit for timing, I read it as self-paced.

Things resolve once you’ve stopped needing them to, which is maddening and also true.

What Planet and Zodiac Sign Rule The Hermit?

The Hermit belongs to Virgo, the sign that would rather examine a thing than announce it.

Mercury rules Virgo, which puts a surprisingly busy mind under all that stillness. His silence is full of thinking.

Astrologers tracing the Virgo current through this card sometimes assign Saturn instead of Mercury, reading the card through its age, patience, and solitude. Both readings fit, so take whichever matches the spread in front of you.

Earth is the element tying it together, practical wisdom rather than abstract insight, the kind you can use on a Tuesday.

If you carry strong Virgo placements, or a chart heavy with earth, The Hermit may feel less like a stranger and more like a mirror.

Researchers, editors, analysts, night-shift workers, long-distance walkers, plus anyone who thinks best with the door closed, all live under this light.

There’s a fuller breakdown of The Hermit’s link to Virgo, plus Mercury if you want to go deeper.

What Does The Hermit Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?

The Hermit is the quietest love card in the tarot deck, which people often misread as bad news.

Here’s how he tends to read in the questions people ask most.

• In love, if you’re single: a deliberate pause rather than a dry spell. Time spent learning what you actually want before looking again.
• In love, in a relationship: one or both of you needing space without anything being wrong, or a season where you’re both quieter than usual.
• As feelings: real feelings held back while someone works themselves out privately. Interest exists, though they’re not ready to say it.
• As a person: private, thoughtful, self-contained, often older or simply unhurried, frequently with Virgo energy.
• As advice: answer your own question first. Nobody else holds the information you do.
• Reversed in love: isolation inside the relationship, stonewalling, or loneliness you’ve stopped admitting to anyone.

What The Hermit Teaches About Grieving in Private

Here’s what this card means when it turns up for someone on the other side of a live reading.

Often he arrives for a person who has gone very quiet since the funeral.

The casseroles stopped coming. Everybody assumed the worst was over, which is usually the exact week it starts.

Grief sends people up the mountain whether they planned the trip or not.

Here’s the distinction this card insists on, though. Solitude and loneliness are not the same room.

Solitude is where you go to hear yourself think. Loneliness is where you end up when nobody knows you went.

The Hermit’s lantern lights one step, never the whole descent, and that turns out to be mercy rather than stinginess. One step is all anyone can take anyway.

The light you’re looking for is the one you’re already carrying.

Whatever you learned from the person you lost is in that lamp now, and it comes with you down the mountain.

The Hermit Tarot Card: Quick Answers

Is The Hermit a good card?

Yes, though it’s a slow good. Upright, it points to clarity, self-knowledge, plus guidance you can actually trust because it came from you.

Does The Hermit mean being single?

Often it means a chosen pause rather than a permanent state. Time alone here tends to improve whatever comes next.

What does The Hermit mean in the future position?

A stretch of quiet ahead, with the answer surfacing on its own once you’ve stopped chasing it.

What number is The Hermit in tarot?

Card nine of the Major Arcana, right after Strength and just before the Wheel of Fortune.

Where The Hermit Might Be Pointing You Now

If The Hermit keeps turning up for you, in a reading, a dream, a tarot deck you shuffle at midnight, it’s worth listening.

This card tends to appear right before people stop outsourcing a decision that was always theirs.

Yours might already be waiting for a quiet hour and no advice at all.

When you’re ready to look at it with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.

Click here to book your reading to find what the quiet has been trying to tell you, plus which step the lantern is lighting next.

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Keep Reading

The Hierophant · The Lovers · The Chariot · Strength · Reversed cards · Start reading

About the Author

A tarot deck found its way to Chris Bennett at fifteen, and he’s been reading ever since. Known everywhere as The Tarot Medium, he works full time as one of the world’s most highly rated psychic mediums and tarot readers, trusted by clients from Perth to Johannesburg, Brighton, Raleigh, and Calgary. Evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, plus grief support rooted in real psychological depth make up the bulk of his practice, every session free of fear or theatrics. There are online tarot courses too, for anyone who’d rather learn to read than be read for.