By Sarah Taylor
The spiritual journey is the realization — not just the information but the real interior conviction — that there is a higher power or God. Or, to make it as easy as possible for everybody: there is an Other; second step: to try to become the Other; and finally the realization that there is no Other. You and the Other are One, always have been, always will be. — Father Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk
At a time when the astrology is asking you to venture in to that Scorpionic territory of deep relating — where boundaries dissolve and you face the contradiction of merging with the Other while resting in the knowledge of who you are — this week’s tarot reading reflects more of the same.
And you have been preparing for this. The Hermit confirms that you have had your forty days and nights in the wilderness, finding, stoking and tending to the inner fire, coaxing a small flame into a light bright enough to remind you what the daylight looks like, and to lead you through the darkness towards it.
The Röhrig-Tarot version of The Hermit is an interesting one. The principal figure is no old, cloaked man holding a lantern in front of him (although this traditional version is in the card, sketched at centre left). No, in the Röhrig-Tarot, we seem to have James Dean, his faced superimposed with the image of a maze, a question mark resting in the place that marks the position of the third eye — our connection to intuition.
On the surface, it seems that this reading’s Hermit is anything but hermit-like. He is young, he is beautiful. It is usually when youth and beauty have started to fade (whether in us or in the situation we face or the life we are chasing) that we encounter The Hermit. In fact, I was getting hung up on the James Dean significance — until, that is, I came across a quote of his that threw things into new relief: