The Hermit Year Card
Year of the Hermit Tarot Card Meanings
What the Hermit Year Card Means for Your Journey
The year of the Hermit teaches you that some truths can only be found in silence. You are discovering that wisdom doesn't come from external teachers alone — it emerges from deep contemplation, from intentional solitude, from the willingness to be alone with yourself. Hermit energy is the lantern in the darkness, the soul-searching journey up the mountain.
When the Hermit year card arrives in your life, you enter the year of the Hermit — a twelve-month initiation into solitude, inner wisdom, and the journey inward. This major arcana card doesn't ask you to connect; it invites you to withdraw, to seek answers within, to discover that true wisdom requires intentional isolation from the noise of the world.
The Hermit tarot card brings profound card meanings when it appears as your personal year card. As the ninth card of the major arcana, The Hermit adds up to 9 in numerology — the number of completion, spiritual wisdom, and the hermit's solitary lamp lighting the way. This root number amplifies the Hermit energy of contemplative seeking throughout your year ahead.
The Hermit Year Card: Major Arcana Meanings & Initiation
CORE ARCHETYPE
The Sage, The Seeker, The Solitary Wanderer, The Inner Guide
MAJOR ARCANA
IX (The Ninth Card of the Major Arcana)
NUMEROLOGY
Adds up to 9 (completion, wisdom, the hermit's solitary quest)
ELEMENTAL ENERGY
Adds up to 9 (completion, wisdom, the hermit's solitary quest)
ASTROLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE
Virgo (discernment, analysis, purification, inner perfection)
Understanding Hermit Tarot Card Meanings in Your Personal Year
The Hermit tarot card meanings shift when this major arcana card becomes your personal year card. Unlike a single tarot reading, the year of the Hermit is a sustained initiation where Hermit energy permeates every aspect of your life for twelve months.
Traditional tarot card meanings describe The Hermit as representing solitude, introspection, inner guidance, wisdom seeking, and withdrawal from the world. When the Hermit year card appears as your tarot card for 2020 (or any current year), these core card meanings become your curriculum.
The Energy of the Hermit: What This Major Arcana Demands
The year of the Hermit will ask you to:
Choose solitude — Intentionally withdraw from social obligations and noise
Seek within — Turn inward for guidance rather than constantly consulting others
Practice contemplation — Build capacity for silence, stillness, and deep thinking
Walk alone — Trust that this journey requires you to go solo
Share wisdom sparingly — Speak only when your words carry real insight
The challenge of the Hermit year card is not becoming isolated or misanthropic. The aspects of the Hermit include returning from solitude with wisdom to share. You withdraw to gain clarity, not to escape forever.
Hermit energy is quiet yet uncompromising. This major arcana card reveals every place where you've avoided being alone, where you've drowned out your inner voice with constant distraction, where you've sought answers everywhere except within.
Months 1-3: The Withdrawal (The Descent Phase)
What's Happening: Hermit energy pulls you away from social obligations. You feel the need for alone time, quiet, contemplation. This is when the Hermit tarot card meanings become personal.
The Work of the Year of the Hermit:
Reduce social commitments and external noise
Create space for daily solitude and silence
Begin contemplative practices (meditation, journaling, solo walks)
Study the card meanings in relation to your inner journey
Shadow to Watch: Using solitude to avoid rather than to seek. Hermit energy is intentional, not escapist.
Gift Emerging: Recognition that you need time alone to hear your own voice
Navigating Your Hermit Year Card: Month-by-Month Guidance
The Hermit Year Card in Different Life Areas
The year of the Hermit is a solo mastery year. This major arcana card asks: What can you accomplish alone? Hermit tarot card meanings in career focus on independent work and deep expertise.
Hermit tarot card meanings in career:
Work independently on projects requiring deep focus
Develop expertise through solitary study and practice
Reduce meetings and collaborative obligations
Create work that emerges from contemplative depth
Navigate authority figures by demonstrating wisdom
Shadow: Becoming so isolated you can't collaborate when needed.
Gift: Mastery built through dedicated solo work
Hermit energy teaches the necessity of solitude within partnership. This is a year of needing space even in committed relationships. The Hermit year card asks: Can you be alone together?
The year of the Hermit asks you to:
Communicate your need for solitude to partners
Take solo time without guilt
Honor that some questions you must answer alone
Build relationships that allow for individuality
Practice being fully present when together because you've recharged in solitude
Shadow: Using solitude to avoid intimacy or difficult conversations.
Gift: Relationships strengthened by honoring individual needs for aloneness
The year of the Hermit is THE solitary creative year. Hermit energy says: Go into your cave and create. This major arcana card demands uninterrupted time alone with your work.
Hermit tarot card meanings for creativity:
Withdraw from creative community to focus on your work
Build deep body of work through consistent solo practice
Resist sharing work-in-progress; protect the fragile creative process
Draw creative inspiration from contemplation and silence
Complete ambitious projects requiring sustained solo focus
Shadow: Never sharing work because nothing feels "ready."
Gift: Profound creative work born from solitary dedication
Spirituality during a Hermit year card is the solo journey. This is a year of personal pilgrimage, retreat, and deep inner work. Hermit energy is the mystic alone with the divine.
Hermit energy in spiritual work:
Attend solo retreats or create home retreat spaces
Practice contemplative prayer or meditation in solitude
Study sacred texts through personal contemplation
Seek wisdom through your own direct experience
Trust your inner guidance over external teachers
Shadow: Spiritual isolation leading to imbalance or delusion.
Gift: Direct mystical experience through solitary practice
The Hermit Year Card: Jungian & Archetypal Perspective
The Wise Old Man Archetype
In Jungian psychology, the Hermit tarot card represents the Wise Old Man — the senex, the sage who has withdrawn from the world to gain perspective and wisdom. This is the archetypal figure who sits on the mountain, holds the lamp of truth, and guides through hard-won insight.
The year of the Hermit initiates relationship with this archetype. You embody the seeker who must journey alone, the contemplative who finds truth in silence, the sage who knows that wisdom requires withdrawal from distraction.
The Lamp of Inner Light
The Hermit year card shows the lantern — the inner light that guides through darkness. This is consciousness itself, the light of awareness that illuminates the path when all external lights go dark.
Individuation Through Solitude
Jung's individuation requires periods of intense solitude. The Hermit year card is your invitation to the solitary inner work:
The Inner Journey — Descending into the unconscious alone
Contemplative Depth — Wisdom that emerges only in silence
The Self as Guide — Learning to trust your inner voice
Integration in Isolation — Doing the work no one else can do for you
If you've avoided being alone or constantly sought external validation, the year of the Hermit asks you to befriend solitude and seek wisdom within.
THE HERMIT ENERGY TEACHES THAT YOU CARRY YOUR OWN GUIDANCE.
THE YEAR OF THE HERMIT ASKS: CAN YOU TRUST THE LIGHT WITHIN WHEN ALL AROUND IS DARK?
The Initiation Calls for More Than Knowing
You've traced the contours of this archetype—its invitations, its thresholds, the sacred work it asks of you. But reading about initiation is not the same as walking through it.
Is this your current Initiation Archetype?
The year you were born into carries a specific myth. Your Growth Aspect may be this one—or the spiral may be calling you elsewhere. Only your numbers will tell.
Already walking this initiation?
If this year's energy hums with recognition—if these words land like remembering—then the full ritual is waiting. Month by month. Threshold by threshold. The codex holds the map.
Curious, but not yet claimed?
You don't need to be in this initiation to learn from it. Join the Circle to unlock our growing library of free PDF guides, sacred tools, and symbolic wisdom.
Shadow Work with The Hermit Year Card
The Hermit Card Shadow: Isolation, Superiority, Avoidance
During the year of the Hermit, you will likely encounter:
The Isolated One — Withdrawing so completely that connection becomes impossible
The Superior Sage — Using wisdom or solitude to feel better than others
The Avoider — Hiding in solitude to escape difficult relationships or responsibilities
The Bitter Hermit — Becoming cynical and misanthropic through excessive isolation
The Frozen Seeker — Endlessly seeking wisdom without ever acting on it
Working with Hermit Year Card Energy
Ritual Practice: Lighting the Inner Lamp
What You'll Need:
Single candle or lantern
Journal and pen
Silent space
The Practice for Your Year of the Hermit:
Light the lantern. Speak: "I withdraw to seek. I honor this Hermit year card initiation and welcome Hermit energy."
Reflect on Hermit tarot card meanings:
What questions can only be answered in solitude?
Where have I been avoiding being alone?
What does my inner wisdom want to tell me?
Write your commitment. Example: "During this Hermit year card, I commit to daily solitude and contemplative practice. I will seek wisdom within."
Sit in silence for as long as comfortable.
Close with intention. Carry the inner lamp always.
Daily Practice: Embodying Hermit Energy
Hermit year card practices:
Solo contemplative walk daily
Journaling in silence
Reduce social media and noise
Meditation or silent prayer
The Hermit tarot card teaches through consistent solitary practice.
The Hermit Year Card & Related Major Arcana Cycles
Cards that Flow from Hermit Energy
Strength/Lust (XI) — The passionate courage that follows inner mastery.
The Wheel of Fortune (X) — External turning of fate after internal illumination.
The Star (XVII) — The guiding light of hope revealed once you’ve faced your own shadow.
The Hanged Man (XII) — The next descent: surrendering personal wisdom into collective consciousness
