Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)
[0:13] The Tarot Card 'The Hermit' and Its Significance
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Aloha everybody. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright, and today we are continuing our archetypes of the Tarot series and we are talking about the path of the hermit. And we are looking at card number nine and the Tarot deck the hermit, what is the hermit? What does this archetype represent? How can we better understand the archetype of the hermit and feel inspired to activate that in our own lives or see the ways we are already embodying the qualities of this archetype.
So that is what we are exploring today. And I love this card, because I feel like the hermit is really the embodiment of the idea, to thine own self be true. And the hermit on a very just basic level represents introspection, going within the path of spiritual seeking truth seeking. From a very rudimentary level, if you were to use tarot cards, and you pull the hermit and a spread, it could just mean you need to take a timeout and do a little bit of self care.
Sometimes it really can just represent like taking time, apart from the crowd being on our own being in our own energy, exactly what the name of the card sounds like, sort of scrolling away and being in cozy self care mode, I am very much excited to like jump into that energy for the rest of my weekend after I make this podcast.
And for me, since I'm recording this in the month of December, there are these moments that I think lend themselves really beautifully to that kind of hermit mode where I just want to be like home and in self care and and reflection during the last month of the calendar year before we flip the page and move into a new cycle. So that's like this very basic interpretation of the hermit.
But on a much deeper level, the hermit is really about the path of seeking our truth, and the path of spiritual exploration. And the hermit is a card that tells us somebody else's truth isn't our truth. It's not necessarily our answer. It's not our pathway to spirit, that that can only be found through our own experience. And the hermit's a little bit like Siddhartha, there is the seeking and learning sometimes that we might do on the spiritual journey, where we tune in to somebody else's wisdom, and we learn from them, we learn a lesson, we learn the spiritual principles, we find some guru or teacher or something like that. And they have these wonderful things to teach us.
But the hermit often says, like, No, you need to go find enlightenment, Nirvana, the wholeness that you seek on your own, it can't come from what somebody else has already created and prescribed to you. You have to take that and integrate that into your wholeness of being. And that is how you find a relationship with source and a relationship to spirituality and your heart in a way that is unique to you.
So I really love this card, because I feel like the hermit represents the path of the seeker. But this is not the seeker who is wandering from vendor to vendor seeking like the spiritual Ice Cream Sandwich. And what I mean by the spiritual Ice Cream Sandwich is like the little boosts that you get, and you never take the time to integrate it and to really chew on and digest what you've learned before you're like bopping along to the next thing.
And you know, getting the next little hit that makes you feel good of whatever the catchphrases over there. And this is not like seeking light. This is deep truth seeking and truly taking the time to not just look on the layer of something or the surface of something, but to dive beneath that and truly learn about whatever principles you are sifting through whatever content or experience it is that you are, perhaps alkalizing, and asking questions of the soul from and asking the questions of, you know, what does the universe want me to learn from this?
[5:19] Personal Truth and Authenticity
And where's my growth in this? And do I believe this is true? What does this mean, for me, that is truly the path of the seeker and the hermit. And ultimately, this is a card about moving deeper into authenticity, and deeper into becoming our true selves. So with that, let's tap into a few ideas on how we can walk the path of the hermit in our lives, and, and or maybe are already walking that path to some extent.
So we are the hermit every time we take space to seek our truth. And I think that truth is a very powerful concept, because something that I've often learned and my own life, and I turn around and teach this is that our truth is something that we have to figure out on our own. It's not something else that somebody can tell us, because that's not our truth. We can't ask somebody, what's your truth and say, Oh, that sounds really good. I think I'm gonna make that my truth as well, not if it doesn't truly hold true for us.
And that's not to say that we might not hear something that somebody else says, and it like really resonates in us. And we're like, yes, they are, like, part of my, you know, expanded tribe, in a sense, like, I vibe with that, that completely makes sense to me. And we kind of take that patch, maybe that we see reflected in their truth. And we patchwork it into our own quilt of how we understand the world and what we understand about it.
But ultimately, it's up to us to truly do the work of figuring out is this true? Does this still hold true for me? And, and our truth change along the way? And if so, how might that look? And what might that look like? If what my truth was 10 years ago, is now different than what it is now? How have I changed in the process? How is my experience itself changed in the process? personal truth is an evolving concept.
And to be clear, we're not talking about very, like factual, logical, scientific truth here that could be measured. And that is some sort of weighted scientific statement with evidence that says, we know this to be true about gravity. Because of these formulas, you know, and what we observe in the world. This is personal truth. And personal truth is a much more subjective thing. It is something that does evolve as our relationship with ourself evolves.
Some truths will hold true for us throughout our entire lifetime. And other things fall away, or they change or they shift. And I always think about this idea that ultimately, truth exist to help us find freedom, truth is alive and love. Truth is about love. It's about becoming a more authentic expression of self.
And when we do that, we're becoming a more authentic expression of love, a more authentic expression of who we are as a soul, a more authentic expression of light, a more authentic expression, of whatever spark was placed in us are reflected in us by by spirit by the universe by Creator Source, however, you want to think about that. And so when we seek truth, ultimately, it's connected to love, and it's connected to freedom, and it's connected to liberation, even though it might not necessarily feel particularly liberating in the moment, because not everybody likes it when we start living our truth.
And that's a whole other story, and probably a whole other podcast on boundaries and how to navigate that. But for today's episode in our path of the hermit, the hermit, kind of like, you know, doesn't care about that I was gonna say something else other than doesn't care. And I realized maybe I'll just curb any language for today.
But you know, he doesn't give a whatever about that because the hermit is on their own path. And they know that ultimately, the more they seek their truth, the closer they travel to the heart of God to the heart of spirit, the heart of the mysteries, the closer they travel to their soul, the closer they travel to themselves.
[9:51] Truth Seeking Through Journaling and Self-Reflection
So, when I think about truth, something that's helpful for me that might be helpful for others to conceptualize Is, is I often think about there are aspects of my truth. And then there is like my true north truth.
So if I'm trying to find my way around a situation, or something in my life that feels sticky, and sticky is my word for anything that feels a little bit. staticky, little bit fuzzy, we have some sort of attachment there uncertainty there, we have residual feelings around something, we have something that doesn't make me feel great. It doesn't feel like we think about that situation, or person or aspect of our life.
And we just have a sense of clarity, and free flowing beautiful, like crystal clear energy, and stuff, it feels like there's like laundry fuzz or something like that, if you were to pull the lint thing out of the dryer, and there's these little pieces we have to pick off. Or there are these like sticky strands, this gummy stuff that we have to clear, in order to see it in a more clear way. That's what I think of is sticky.
And when something is sticky to me, oftentimes I will think about the idea that there are aspects of truth, something that I might feel and try on Versailles, something that I may think that is not necessarily my whole truth, it's just reflecting back and aspect of it.
And then there is the more complete truth, which is where I try and arrive when I've done my process work and sifted through all those other kinds of channels of information, and really gotten down to like, what's at the bedrock of this, for me, our truest of true like that true north truth is usually the simplest truth, it usually is kind of taking everything else out of the equation, you know, what's the bottom line on this? What does this mean to me? What does this mean for my life? What do I really feel about? You know, what do I know to be true on this?
So I like to think of truth as something that has all these different, like fractal points, or if it was like a kaleidoscope, or like a giant ball of color, you know, colors and like, each color is an aspect of it.
And then I might label the whole the whole sphere, and be like, Okay, this is my summation of truth. And like, all these little colors are aspects of it. And I feel like that's an important distinction to make. Because sometimes when we are sifting for our truth, we get kind of frustrated with ourselves, and we don't figure out, we can't figure out why it's so hard for us to know our hearts on the matter, or to understand where we're coming from on something, or why we're feeling a certain way or why we can't just make a decision.
And I think that it's helpful to understand why we can feel in conflict with ourselves sometimes. And to realize truth is not just the easiest matter, that there's many things that we have to clear out of the way and we have to ask ourselves, so why is that an aspect of my truth? And where did that come from? And is that reflecting back and accurate experience now? Or is that reflecting back something in me that might feel wounded, or something that I'm bringing in from the past.
So there's all this fabulous process work that we can do around the quest for truth. And when I think about the art of just sitting down in our journal, or I think it was Julia Cameron who talked about doing the it's like the daily pages, or the morning pages, I think, and this was in one of her books, I guidance for writers and it was talking about doing like three pages where basically you just put down like everything that you need, and release it from your brain, and just write it all out. And after you've done that you kind of clear the slate.
So you can either write or you can really get to the heart of the matter. When I think about that practice, I think about the hermit, just and using like the notebook itself using a journal as your tool for spiritual growth and spiritual enlightenment and your tool for truth seeking through the act of sifting through your own thoughts and just using either your pen or your fingers or if for some reason you speak your thoughts into a Dictaphone using your voice, using some form of yourself as the truth seeker.
So you can know that anytime you are engaged in the act of like doing your process work, seeking truth trying to figure out what holds true for you in a situation. What do you believe and why? Anytime you're going through a crisis of self or questioning yourself, you are being the hermit or at least you have an invitation to be the hermit and to take that and to like really take it into yourself and use it as an opportunity to expand and come deeper into your truth.
[15:01] All Experiences Are a Pathway to Authenticity
And that leads me to my next point. And that is that we are also embodying the archetype of the hermit whenever we can just adopt the perspective that ultimately all of our experiences are a pathway to authenticity, they are all a pathway to our truth, all of our experiences no matter what those are, if we can have the right perspective, ultimately can be an invitation to really take us inward and help us figure out what was my experience of this?
What did I think about this? What's my reaction to this? How did I learn from this? How did I grow from this? What meaning can I make from this? What didn't I like about this? What wound might this have reflected in me or kind of ripped open in me?
How might I find healing in that, ultimately, when we are able to see that all of our experiences alchemize together, and can be used to help us become a more authentic version of ourselves, we are being the truth seeker, we are being the hermit we are on the quest for enlightenment, we are moving in the direction of opening to a more expanded relationship with ourself, we are open to self discovery, we are open to self exploration.
And we adopt this attitude that we are all these adventures on this like great grand adventure of life that comes with many twists and turns and some chapters and places and locations that we like, and some that we don't like at all. But ultimately, all of it is us having this big travel adventure.
And as these travelers, we are constantly learning about who we are, we are constantly reinventing our relationship with ourself, we are always growing, always fluid, always evolving. Even when we are just resting for a while and are feeling this sense of I've done a lot of self work. And I just need to be where I'm at right now and do some integration, there is still things happening inside of us under the surface, we can always trust our process, we can always trust the process of the soul.
And so ultimately, we are always moving in a direction of personal evolution, especially and actually all of us are even the ones who might not care about that and are doing everything they can to stay stuck in the same place. Like you can't go through this life and not grow our soul is here for growth. But ultimately, for those who in particular are here for the growth and they are ready to own it.
They're here to step into their spiritual light, they're here to embody their heart wisdom, then no matter what happens, whether we feel like we made a mistake, didn't make a mistake, got it, right. Didn't get it right, kind of came out in the middle somewhere, had a really interesting engaging season in life, how to boring, mundane, stressful season and like, ultimately, all of it comes together. And we can always learn and grow if we can have some form of a growth mindset. And use that growth mindset to help us become a more authentic version of ourselves.
I think that the hermit truly embodies the idea that the path of the hermit is about understanding the meaning of enlightenment. And enlightenment, in my opinion, is not about sitting on top of a mountain top reaching a state of complete and utter like bliss or nirvana or something like that.
This is probably where I differ from some traditions that might say that, you know, enlightenment is about the oneness or it's about something like that. I don't necessarily disagree with that. It's just not the truth that I have been called here to teach in this world. The truth that I have been called here to teach is teaching people how to come into their heart and their heart wisdom and become their fullest expression of self and to embody their authenticity.
[19:28] Personal Growth and Enlightenment
And so I see enlightenment as the act of turning lights on in spaces inside of ourselves that were previously dark. Every time we find the courage to walk into an experience of self to dance with our shadows, to stay curious about something within us and instead of shutting it down, say, wow, why am I reacting that way? What's that about for me?
Every time we find the courage to step through, or knocked down a defense that keeps us closer from our truth closer from our heart closer from our realness of being And we are able to step into a more raw vulnerable space inside of ourselves a messy space inside of ourselves something that maybe we have to grapple with a little bit, we're bringing light to a space that was previously dark.
And I always tell people, just because we turn the light on doesn't mean we organize the space right away, I truly believe that there is a process for working on our own healing, working on our own emotional wounding. If we're talking about the idea of turning lights on and spaces inside of ourselves that feel hard to turn the lights on. And because we're afraid of what's there, it might be really overwhelming to try and do that all at once.
But I do think it's helpful to think about the idea of when maybe you don't turn on every light in that room, maybe you just put a little candle in there a little lamp and put a little bit of light, put a nightlight in there, and at least know that this messy stuff is there. And when the time is right, you'll deal with it.
And that you trust that when it's right, you'll know that it will just be coming to the surface. And that will be the time to step into healing, then we can't heal every single thing inside of ourselves all at once, all at the same time. It's always really boggling to me, when I see sort of these things out there, I'll see these offerings where people kind of it's like this, like change your entire relationship with yourself. And it's these quantum healing sessions.
And something that kind of says, you know, we're just going to heal all your wounds and heal the inner child. And we're going to do all this and we're going to do it and you know, 48 hours and some retreat, that costs a lot of money by all these individuals. Now, healing can take place at those things. You know, they absolutely can, when something set up as a container for healing with the right practitioners, and right intentions, miracles can happen, profound shifts can take place.
But it is my experience that a lot of our healing and a lot of our inner work, it needs to be integrated. Even if something is like instantly healed, or we have this mountaintop moment where we see with clarity, like the wound, and we're able to, like bring grace and love into it, there's still usually a lot of integration work to do. And some wounds stay there for a while or shrapnel from wounds might be Ennis for a while. And it can take a while to come to the surface. And that happens at its own time. Or maybe we thought we healed something.
And then five years down the line, it's coming up for us. And it's really shocking. I hear this sometimes where somebody says like I've done therapy on this, or I thought I addressed this, or I did the series of healing courses and did all this work around this, you know, back in 2000, and whatever. And so I don't know why it's coming back up now. And I often think of our experience with healing as a spiral, we circle back around to some things.
But we are spiraling, I'm not sure if we want to think of it as upwards or downwards, we could think of it as upwards in the sense that we are continually going up and every time we come back around to something, we're able to see it from a higher vantage point, we've sort of healed the layers underneath it. And so we kind of access this next layer that we didn't know was there and each time we find more growth. And so in that way, it's sort of this upward spiral towards higher perspective, and towards kind of growing this higher self.
At the same time, there's almost this downward spiral motion where I think about this downward thing, almost like each time we come closer, and a little bit deeper and to a more real and more healed, and more authentic version of ourselves. So I guess this is by like a multi dimensional spiral that's moving in all directions all at once. But we do come back around to these things.
And what it does is it presents us with the chance to revisit it from who we are now in life, because we're not the same as we were when we addressed that issue five years ago, and we are able to see what's still there. What healing Have I already done, and that still holds true and what might be there still that I didn't access before because it wasn't time or I hadn't come to that life stage.
A wonderful example of this. I'm actually thinking about the loss of my brother Brent, and I have done so much grief work around that so much grief work around that. You know, how can I not I teach on grief I write on grief. I've talked about it extensively I've written about it. I will probably be like working on I don't know healing. My grief is quite the right phrase, more navigating my grief with trying to find the most healed outcome for the rest of my lifespan, but I definitely had stuff come up around like the five, six year mark anniversary of his loss that was different than two, three years in.
[25:10] Reflections on Grief and Personal Evolution
And some of that for me, is this reflection of who have I become since his loss? And how does this map and every time I circle back around to an anniversary, or he comes to mind, or it's the holiday season? And I'm thinking about him?
How does this BethAnne intersect with my awareness of missing him and his loss? And how has life continued to go on without him? And how does that keep changing me and my grief passage and my grief journey. And so sometimes these layers of new things will come up, and there's no way I could have accessed them. It wasn't appropriate.
Several years ago, because I wasn't at that point in life, there are some things that I will continue to access, I think when I pass certain mile markers in my life, that are really going to tap into my experience of losing him, and I haven't hit those shots. So we come back around to things, even when we thought we'd address them. And we thought we turn the lights on in that room.
And we'll find that, oh, the room got bigger, or there was this whole other section that I didn't know was there. And now I have some more lights to turn on and more light to bring in. And again, none of this is about like right or wrong. timelines, deadlines, nothing like that. It's simply continuing to find the courage on the journey of the hermit, that journey into our true self, the journey into authenticity. It's simply finding the courage to bring light into the spaces we encounter, especially the spaces that are unknown spaces that trigger us spaces where we have growth to do. That's what I think enlightenment is about, at least from the perspective of the journey of the heart. And that brings me to the last point I wanted to make today.
And that is ultimately the path of the hermit is the path into the heart, at least on your heart magic today, from my perspective, because our heart really is, it's the portal to our connection to everything meaningful. It is our spiritual connection. It's the gateway to our intuition. It is how we access the voice of our soul.
It is how we access our inner self. I often think of the heart as the gatekeeper that we pass through every time we go inward, to truly sift and truly find our truth. The mind is a tool that helps us do that, and gives us all these good ideas and all these good thoughts and has all this reaction and chatter and questions and doubts and all those things that the mind does and all of its interesting mechanisms.
But ultimately, the mind at some point has to seed to the wisdom of the heart, and enter in through the wisdom of the heart in order for us to truly tap into our authentic truth. And what holds true for us in terms of how we understand ourselves, how we understand our journey, how we understand our spiritual connection. So anytime you are rocking your heart magic, anytime you are asking yourself, How can I love myself in this? How can I learn about love in this? How can I evolve in loving this, you are on the path of the heart, you are using your heart magic, you are in your heart wisdom.
Anytime you are learning about the heart anytime you are working with your heart working with your heart chakra, all of that is the path of the hermit because it allows us to go deeper into our true self when we can get out of our heads and get into our heart. I want to close today with a poem. It's called Lion Heart. And just a little background on this. I wrote this in May of 2019.
And I was going through this time in my life on the island of kawaii where I called myself the wanderer I was very much tree seeking, I was trying to figure out my path. Every time I thought I had it figured out I'd sort of been doing that. Are you my mother? Are you my mother? Are you my mother things and trying to find my like tribe and spiritual group and calling and platform and none of it was going the way that I wanted to. And I was like three years, maybe two or three years into living here at this time. And oh, I was going through so much questioning.
And I wrote this poem out of it and literally the words were coming through and to my mind one day while I was wandering I was taking a walk on this little bike path and this tree tunnel that used to exist up in Princeville and this is what came through. This is a tongue twister so hopefully I can read this without tripping over my words.
[30:05] Poetry Reading: Lionheart
Lionheart, my dear Lionheart Don't you know, it all unfolds according to the patterns of your soul, and polka dot waves, and plaid idiosyncrasies through signs and shades and cosmic synchronicities, your tessellate tapestry weaving the way to the intricate path of your souls galaxy,
my dear Lion Heart. I know you think you still have a way to go. But stop and find ease for how far you stepped and know your journey is already whole. Your magnitude of exactitude will tell you don't rest when the current mid flow.
But I say pause and watch the cloud shift, then drift left and sift long the currents blue toe.
My dear Lionheart, you'll so then you'll grow and in the end all leads back to your soul, whose rhythms and rhymes and triangle beats chime with the time of your wandering feet, who walk in a line of invisible belief, following your shine and letting heart lead.
So don't be worried that you'll miss the boat or lose your way or that life will withhold the future dreams you'll embody and own.
Because Don't you know, my dear girl, it all unfolds according to the patterns of your soul.
And that was me being the hermit, walking the path of the hermit and following my heart. As best I knew how. All right, thank you so much for joining me and today's the path of the hermit archetypes of the Tarot.
[31:57] Coming Up Next Week on Your Heart Magic
Next week on your heart magic, it is coming out right around Winter Solstice.
So we are going to be doing a holiday type episode and I'm going to do sort of a version of the talk storytime series I've been doing and share some writings and thoughts related to the holidays and share some of my favorite passages that were written around this time of year and some Solstice inspired themes, and something that feels celebratory and festive and about just gratitude and being in our light.
So that is coming up next week. And the meantime have an amazing week. Be well. Be Love, be you and be magic
you've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life