I am on semi-retreat this week, and so I asked Pamela Eakins, co-creator and writer of Tarot of The Spirit, if she would be able to make a contribution to our series on tarot, and she generously accepted.
My correspondence with Pamela has so far been limited to email, but her spirit has shone through in her interactions with me — and in her writing, which I have found to be both vital and woven with a depth that is also apparent in the images from the deck that she has produced with her mother, artist Joyce Eakins. You can find the website for The Tarot of The Spirit here.
I’ll be back on Sunday with the Weekend Tarot Reading.
— Sarah
Key IX, the Hermit, is the creative hand. This creative hand can be viewed as the Hand of God. It is also your own hand. It is the hand that magically creates, preserves and transforms the world.
Creation, preservation and transformation are the three points which define the divine circle of eternal movement. The Hermit is the Ninth Key, which is three times three. The Circle of Eternity, as symbolized by three, geometrically expands. This expansion denotes an incredible power. Thus, three is the number used for magical incantation. Three times three — nine — becomes the magical number because it always returns to itself: 9 x 1 = 9; 9 x 2 = 18, 1 + 8 = 9; 9 x 3 = 27, 2 + 7 = 9; 9 x 4 = 36, 3 + 6 = 9 …
The power of nine is extraordinary wisdom. The deepest understanding of the Hermit involves the knowledge that, like nine, in the end, we shall return to our Self in an infinitely recurring cyclical process. The secret of the Hermit is the knowledge that all that is, always was. It is the understanding that there is nothing new under the Sun. Everything that is, always was, and ever shall be. We discover this again and again.
This means that with all of your external searching for answers and all of your external searching for love, you paradoxically wind up right back where you started: alone, with your Self. What you learn is simple. There is one answer and that answer is love of Self.
What does this mean? Beneath all external layers and social conditioning to the contrary, the deeper you spiral on the path, the more you learn that there is one spirit and this is the spirit of life itself. You learn on this inward spiral that you are the soul, that you hold the light — the power of love — in your own hand: within. In coming to this realization … you become a guide for your fellow journeyers whose destination (as they will eventually realize) is simply their own heart.
The Hermit is the familiar archetype of the Wise Old Man (or Wise Old Woman) who takes up residence deep in the forest. He has no need of society. Historically, he is discovered again and again by spiritual seekers who have lost their way. He is frequently discovered by a “hero” who has temporarily lost his way. There are wonderful examples of the wisdom of the Hermit contained in the Tales of King Arthur, and, in contemporary times, in the movie trilogy Star Wars.