2025: a Hermit year

I've got ground to cover!

It’s a Hermit year, y’all. 2025 reduces to 9 (2+0+2+5=9), which means we are working with the energy of the Hermit all year as a collective. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Hermit, and how valuable this archetype is for us all as we move through increasingly uncertain times.

I’m going to explore the Hermit in depth in some upcoming posts; today I just wanted to introduce the connections I’ll be making, and there’s a prompt at the bottom on how you can more intimately work with this card.

What I’ll be writing about this year regarding the Hermit:

The book ‘Meditations on the Tarot’ calls the Hermit a ‘walking salesman of peace’. What does that even mean? Sure sounds good—'cause wow does the world need more peace. How can we become that in our own lives, sharing peace with the people around us?

The Hermit corresponds to Virgo, which gives it a connection to the Knight of Pentacles (also Virgo) and to the Magician (Mercury, Virgo’s ruling planet). Let’s explore these relationships. What do they teach us about the importance of grounding, paying attention, cultivating silence, and taking long walks?

What is the value of an archetype so deeply associated with solitude in a year when we’re all deeply aware of how critical it is to commit to community?

Virgo is represented by the virgin, a word which makes the most sense in the context of ‘virgin wilderness’: it’s about wholeness and belonging to yourself. The Hermit is sometimes considered an eccentric. And to remain a ‘virgin wilderness’, to preserve that part of yourself in a world that wants to commodify everything, to make us all products….that is hugely counter-cultural and also wildly difficult. What can the Hermit teach us this year about preserving our own wilderness? How might that influence our relationship with social media?

The Hermit teaches us to focus on the present moment. What is right here, right now? What contemplative practices can help us cultivate this sort of awareness? How might we need to adjust our divination practices to foster this?

The Hermit connects to the Moon (The Moon, as card 18, reduces to 9), which represents uncertainty, and can often bring doubt and despair along with it. The Hermit teaches us how to move through that landscape without drowning, making our peace with uncertainty.

In the story of the Major Arcana, the Hermit (9) prepares us to meet the Wheel (10). The Wheel is overwhelm and change, the Wheel is opportunity, the Wheel is the tapestry that weaves us all together…..if we can embody the Hermit, how does that prime us for these encounters?

What does the Hermit teach us about the value of slowing down?

What is your own personal ‘spiritual genius’?

If we look at the ‘grid’ of the 3 lines of the Major Arcana, the Hermit shares a column with the High Priestess and the Tower. Let’s explore these connections, and the different sorts of courage they represent.

Returning to the connection with the Moon: the Moon can be about our deep instinctual intuition. I want to look at the Hermit’s ability to move instinctively, particularly because Virgo rules the digestive system, ie the gut. What does the Hermit teach us about accessing gut knowing? This will also tie in its relationship with Enneagram 9s, a type that is in the “gut triad”, but also a type that is considered ‘self-forgetting’. Can we look at the Hermit and the Moon as archetypes of self-remembering and recovery?

What do all the minor 9s have to teach us about ‘real life’, everyday applications of Hermit work?

That’s a lot of ground that I want to cover this year! I’ll have to take it Hermit-style, step by step. I also plan to do more writing here on Substack, continuing the series I started but never finished on the astrology of the minors, and also exploring more astrological ‘families’ in the Tarot (like the Hermit/Magician/Knight of Pentacles group mentioned here). Almost all of my writing here remains free, but paid subscribers help me afford more time to write. If you’re willing to pitch in your support, I’d appreciate it so much.

And here’s a simple prompt to get you started on this walk with the Hermit:

What part of myself am I asked to remember/recover this year?

(I drew Ace of Swords for this prompt! I guess the universe is encouraging all this writing, ha ha. I would love to hear what you pulled if you’re willing to share!)