The Hermit

Upright

The passive pole of the human world. Teth is a roof — shelter, that which encloses in order to preserve. Papus's Hermit carries his own light and his own protection: withdrawal that is deliberate and temporary, undertaken so that something can be seen which crowds make invisible. Prudence in his sense is not timidity but the deliberate slowing of a thing until its shape can be made out. Divinatory sense: prudence, wisdom.

Reversed

Shelter become hiding — a withdrawal that has outlived its reason and is now the situation rather than a method for examining it. Reversed also covers prudence used as a name for a decision the querent does not want to make: the lamp carried everywhere and never actually lifted.

Correspondences

Papus's number

9

Hebrew letter

Teth (ט)

Hieroglyph

A roof; a shelter — that which encloses to preserve

Septenary

Second septenary (8–14), the world of Man — second term, the passive principle (He)

Divinatory sense

Prudence; wisdom

In a Spread

At the commencement, the matter begins in a deliberate step back — and Papus would read the step back as the cause, not the delay. In opposition, someone's absence is doing more than their presence would. At equilibrium the situation is stable because it is being left alone. As the result: the answer is to go slower, and the card is unusually literal about it.