I read something this week that made me realize for the past 8 years I’ve been living a lifestyle similar to the Hermit in tarot. After my spiritual awakening in 2017 I started changing and becoming someone else. I had about 10 friends present at my birthday in 2017, but by 2019 they had all fallen away. My focus was already health (food and fitness) and then became spirituality too. This was also when I stopped dating for 5 years and pushed myself to find out who I was because I hadn’t stopped to think about it through a decade of back to back dating before that. I had one relationship during these 8 years and it was also teaching me how to be in my cave but also let someone else in. Now I socialize very little and spend hours at my altar a day in deep study or here with you, writing or speaking about different things in long form that I realize(d) about life. Once every 2-3 months I’ll meet up with my old co-workers, but that’s the extent of friends I have and the texting I do. Conversations at home with my family are also very minimal, there’s no how are you or how’s it going or what’s happening. I keep to myself a lot and that’s probably why my family thinks I work with the devil, but I don’t really care they don’t know that “I’m doing the hard stuff, I’m doing my time, I’m doing it for us, for our family line,” to quote Lana del Rey. And for the last two years my focus has been on finances: I haven’t used a credit card since January of 2024, I shut down my savings account this year, and I’ve mentioned I haven’t bought any clothes but for one or two things, I’ve been customizing my own.
To some degree when situations in our lives force us to go inward, only then can we develop self-mastery. We can also choose to make it a permanent lifestyle - I don’t know if that’s where I’m headed but it sure feels like it. Are you living this way? Can you relate? Here are some other descriptions of the Hermit to better understand maybe, what it’s all for:
“In literature the hermit is presented as a dispenser of hospitality to strangers, a healer of wounded knights, a counselor and burier of the dead. At adventure’s end, a wandering knight will often happen upon a hermitage in the forest, and as the kind hermit feeds and dresses [their] wounds, [they] explain to the knight the higher significance of [their] adventure. The knight is often surprised by the hermit’s perception of events as they are not perceptions based on the mundane, as the knight is accustomed. The hermit is an important character in many fables, such as those of King Arthur. And in those fables we also often encounter magicians such as the legendary magician and seer to King Arthur, Merlin. … The Hermit was once The Magician in the tarot, but has now grown older, and wiser. The Hermit knows that creative power and skill have their place, but will not lead to spiritual enlightenment. [The Hermit] asks us to meditate and turn our attention inward so as to find our own truth and understanding.” ~source
“Here I’m becoming my own masterpiece; I’m perfecting my life’s work and creating the finest, wisest version of myself. … I’ll study all the great philosophies and sacred teachings so that I may synthesize their profound words and express them eloquently through my own being. I’ll happily work with you and guide you through your own process when I’ve completed my own.” ~source
I’ve also seen someone describe the Hermit as Motel 6, “We’ll leave the light on for you.” I love this.
While this is not everyone’s path, the only way I can describe it is everything becomes quieter. Lately I’ve been even thinking about what it would be like to live off the grid. To get a simpler phone, to engage in more “peasant-like” activities which we as humans were made for as I’ve been reading lately. These are some more things I’ve noticed about how life is becoming hermitic:
Moving away from social media
I’ve been on Instagram since the beginning like most, and even as recent as the beginning of this year I was engaging with it a lot and it felt more than right to. But since the summer I’ve felt like it doesn’t feel so right for me anymore. I’ve been debating putting up only 3 pinned images at the top so if people stumble on Healing with the Occult there they can get some info and engage with the website link in the bio if they want to. Included in the one of the pinned images would be locations where I’ll be present holding classes maybe, or whatever the universe has in store for me upcoming next. But something about posting as I was in the past is leaving me. Instagram feels a bit like a cesspool, it’s how I can best describe how I feel it and my desire has become less and less to engage. I’ve more been browsing Reddit these days as it’s a way to help others. I’ve also been second guessing my Pinterest page and what led me to start it in the first place. Not sure whether I will act on any of this but I think lessening all of it or moving away from it altogether is a commonality during this type of lifestyle change.
Decreasing social engagement IRL
I know that my old friends fell away because their roles in my life ended. At least, that’s what makes sense to me when I think about it. I also don’t think it’s possible to go inward when we’re accepting a thousand opinions at once, you know from our best friend and uncle and babysitter and grandparents or this person or that. On some level we all try to tell each other what to do all the time. There was in the past at least one person in my life that was always trying to give me unsolicited advice. I also sought it out, insatiably (from readers too like I mentioned before). This could never have allowed me the space to trust my own feelings, decisions about relationships, body, and self though. It is hard but it’s also about me and boundaries too. In truth I want to get to a place where I answer to no one but the divine. I’m not saying I will never have friends again but it seems there’s something about less daily engagement with people over long periods that makes you think a lot more and discover what you need to about you.
Respecting creative highs and lows
In the past I panicked a lot when I didn’t put out a newsletter for the week or if I missed some time due to having situations come up in life. What I learned since then has been around our natural energy and how it works, and it does work in waves which means there are creative highs but then there are lows and without the lows we couldn’t experience the highs. Lately I have given myself more space to experience life and then bring it back here, as well as wanting to only speak when it matters and is important to (not feeling pressured to speak for no reason), trying to learn when to stay silent and when to share. Articles always came directly from me but when I felt the gaps I would feel I had to force something faster and this would stress me out so much. It’s very similar to the cycle people experience on social media, “I believe I have to post otherwise I become irrelevant. Otherwise no one cares. Otherwise I am forgotten.” This is another way we embody the shadow of Capricorn (no time for Cancer) and believe without performances or momentum we are nothing. I have realized how important it is to decondition this societal view and try not bring it to anything I am working on.
Appreciating the simplest of things
When I was on MySpace in the early 2000s like everyone else there was this man who befriended me. I can’t remember exactly but he had to have been a few times my age because he had white hair and was nearly retired. He had become fascinated with everything I posted on there and he called me Raven. As a typical young person would in the early 2000s I exchanged info with him so he knew where I worked and where I lived, which seems insane now, these wild stories from the early days of the Internet. But anyway he used to send me gifts, one time he sent 100 roses to Victoria’s Secret where I worked as a manager, and the florist delivered them personally because they were so floored they like wanted to know who this guy was, yeah little did they know. He also mailed a larger than life painting to my house.
The painting is of a picture of me I posted on MySpace with his poetry written in the background and Raven written on the side, and he also sent a small black mug that had the same exact image. I used to despise these things, I shoved them deep into the attic for years never to be seen again. But recently I took the mug out and started using it, delighted, saying like this is my fucking life, crazy creepy weirdness madness and all - who cares? I actually love this mug now, I’m grateful for it it’s like a relic from my 20s. He captured me in a really unique way. It’s all in all really cool. I’ve been using it to drink my tea at night and it really delights me.
Releasing excess
When I first joined the financial group I am no longer a part of but use their values and principles every day, during the holidays the woman working with me as a sponsor-esque person replied to me (after I told her I was short on money to buy gifts) why don’t you cook for them instead of buying them something material? What started in me from this time was I became more excited to make things for people with my hands nowadays as gifts rather than buy actual material possessions. It’s filled with so much more love and appreciation and unique factor and I greatly enjoy this outlook on giving. Some things I’ve done the last two years are: cooking a meal, baking a cake or cookies, creating a variety of spiritual things from almost nothing. Something else that’s a side note is instead of eating all this candy and ice cream and chips I used to every night, over the years I have learned that having one small bag of popcorn at night and buying one white chocolate bar for the month and eating 1-2 rectangles each night with my tea actually satisfies the craving in me for snacks and sweets.
To close, I wanted to ensure I added some financial resources I created to this article because there is a huge part of this lifestyle which has to do with simplifying your life on especially a material level. The following files are in Excel sheet format but downloaded from my Google sheets. They appear a little off in Excel but I discontinued my subscription with Microsoft so I couldn’t fix them, so it may be best to open the files in Google sheets as they will appear exactly how I set them up. If you have any questions, feel free to leave in the comments below and I’ll get back to you.
Jennifer Diane is a writer, artist and intuitive based out of New Jersey. Healing with the Occult is a publication that offers insight into the psyche and other transformative knowledge through various creative mediums.