The Blue Buddha (The Hermit)

In a reading

• Deep self-reflection. Working through your inner patterns. Separating from other people’s expectations.
• Chosen solitude that heals and gives you the resources for inner change. Looking for your own, personal, genuine meaning.
• Relationships: needing distance to rethink things. Needing personal space. On the positive side — a mature relationship between two self-sufficient people who respect each other’s boundaries. Sometimes it points to a conscious stretch of being alone after a relationship ends.
• Career, money: working on your own, a private practice — like counseling or mentoring. It can also be freelancing or remote work. Earning isn’t the goal here; the focus is on professional depth, expertise and passing on knowledge after going deep into this state.
• In readings about the future it can point to a hospital or medical workers.

From the wider tradition

Not Tahmina’s own words: meanings common among other tarot readers, which she has reviewed and approved.

• The lantern with a star — carrying the light of truth to others, lighting the way for those who are searching.
• The staff — wisdom gathered over time, and support.
• The mountaintop — a height reached, looking down on the path behind you.
• The role of mentor, teacher, wise one; looking for the meaning of life, a spiritual retreat.

Stage of the journey

The Hermit is card IX, the ninth step on the path from the Fool to the World. It closes the first big stage of the path: a person has already tried a lot in the outside world and now, for the first time, truly turns inward.

What a person has already been through. Before the Hermit they went through the Fool — walked into the unknown; the Magician — realized they can act; the High Priestess — learned to hear their inner knowing; the Empress — started to create; the Emperor — built structure and took responsibility; the Hierophant — gained knowledge and formed values; the Lovers — made their own choice; the Chariot — started moving toward a goal; Strength — learned to handle their emotions, desires and inner energy. By now a person can do a lot. But a question comes up: “What was I even rushing for?” The Hermit is the stop after a lot of action.

What happens in the Hermit. A person steps back from the outside world for a while. Not necessarily literally moving to the mountains and switching off their phone for three years — it’s an inner solitude. They start leaning less on other people’s opinions, expectations and ready-made answers, and look more for their own meaning. The Hermit’s lantern stands for inner light: it doesn’t light up the whole path at once — it only shows the next step. And a person realizes: “I don’t have to know the whole route. It’s enough to see the next step.”

Where the Hermit leads — next comes the Wheel of Fortune, card X. And here a new round begins. After a stretch of inner searching, life starts moving again on its own: the Hermit — “I stopped and understood myself”; the Wheel — “And now life is changing.” The Wheel brings a person back into motion, but now with a new level of awareness.

So the first ten cards can be seen as the first big cycle:

• The Fool — I begin.
• The Magician — I can.
• The High Priestess — I sense.
• The Empress — I create.
• The Emperor — I build.
• The Hierophant — I understand.
• The Lovers — I choose.
• The Chariot — I move.
• Strength — I steer myself.
• The Hermit — I understand myself.
• Wheel of Fortune — I enter a new cycle.

Shadow side

If the Hermit’s bright side is self-knowledge, wisdom, independence, being able to spend time alone with yourself, his shadow side starts where solitude turns into isolation. A person no longer goes off by themselves to hear themselves. They hide from the world.

It can show up as:

• “I don’t need anyone”;
• being way too closed off;
• turning down help and closeness;
• emotional coldness;
• endless analysis instead of action;
• escaping into spirituality or knowledge so you don’t have to live through real feelings;
• the belief that “I know it all myself”;
• fear of letting someone into your life again;
• the feeling that nobody would understand anyway;
• turning wisdom into an onlooker’s stance: I understand everything, but I don’t change anything.

And here’s a really interesting difference. The mature Hermit: “I go inward to understand myself, and then I come back to the world.” The shadow Hermit: “I go away from the world because I feel safer alone.”

And if you look at the path of the Major Arcana, this matters a lot. The Hermit stands after Strength and before the Wheel of Fortune. Strength taught a person to deal with their inner impulses. The Hermit says: “Now stop and find your own light.” But if he gets stuck in his shadow, the next stage — the Wheel — becomes impossible: life keeps changing, and the person stays in their cave.

So the Hermit’s shadow side isn’t just loneliness. It’s when looking for yourself turns into a way to never expose yourself to life again.

The section above is the shadow side of the upright card — every card has one. I don’t read cards upside down — here is why.