Knowing yourself is the light the Hermit carries
Lao Tzu's idea that knowing yourself is enlightenment, tied to the Hermit card: a reflection on the courage to light your own inner flame.
Lao Tzu taught that knowing others is wisdom, but knowing yourself is enlightenment — a much higher step, and a much harder one to reach. The Hermit, in tarot, carries that same journey: the lantern that lights the path comes from within, and it only switches on in silence.
Opening the grimoire again
For years I was good at explaining exactly what everyone close to me was feeling, what they needed, what was going wrong in their life — and it took me far longer to look inward with that same clarity. It was reading about Lao Tzu, the Chinese sage from many centuries ago, that helped me understand why the maths never added up: he said that knowing others is wisdom, but knowing yourself is enlightenment. They're different things, and the second is much harder than the first. I'm writing this today because I still catch myself pouring all my attention into understanding someone else, and almost none into understanding what's going on inside me.
The teaching: two steps on the same staircase
Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching, had a way of saying things in few words that carried a whole world inside them. The line about knowing others and knowing yourself is one of those: he places the two side by side, like someone showing two steps of the same staircase, with the second much higher than the first. Understanding someone else takes attention and observation, things life in society trains us to do from an early age. Understanding yourself takes silence, and silence is something modern life almost never hands you for free. For Lao Tzu, true strength wasn't about winning an argument or out-explaining someone else — it was about overcoming your own inner confusion, and that's a fight nobody else ever sees.
The card that carries this staircase: the Hermit
The Hermit is the card that illustrates exactly this staircase of Lao Tzu's. It shows a lone figure at the top of a mountain, carrying a lantern that lights only one step ahead — nothing more. He isn't fleeing the world out of fear; he's stepping back by choice, to listen to what can only be heard in silence. His lantern's light doesn't come from outside — it's his own, it's his own awareness lighting the way, one step at a time. When this card turns up in a reading, I almost never talk about sad loneliness. I talk about an invitation to stop looking outward so much and turn the lantern inward instead, even if that means walking more slowly for a while.
The fear of being alone with your own thoughts
The fear of being alone with your own thoughts is real, and that's why so many people avoid silence all day long, filling every minute with noise, screens, conversation — anything that keeps them from meeting themselves. I've run from myself like that too, packing my whole schedule just so I wouldn't have to sit down and ask what I actually wanted. The Hermit doesn't promise that meeting is comfortable — he climbs the mountain alone precisely because he knows he'll find things he'd rather not see. But it's only up there, with little light and no distractions, that you can tell apart what's your own fear from what's fear you borrowed from other people.
In love, recognising the pattern before repeating it
In love, people who don't really know themselves tend to repeat the same kind of choice and call it bad luck, when it's actually a pattern. I've chosen partners who looked alike, thinking the story would end differently this time, without realising it was me carrying the same wound into the next relationship. Knowing yourself in love means asking why that specific type of person attracts you, what inside you recognises it as familiar, even when it isn't good for you. It's slow work, done by low lantern light, with no rush to find someone to blame. People who know themselves love in a cleaner way, because they can already tell an old wound apart from a real desire.
In money, the light on your own patterns
With money, self-knowledge shows up in simple things we avoid looking at: why I spend when I'm anxious, why I'm afraid to charge what I'm worth, why I accept less than I need just to avoid an awkward moment in a negotiation. Without that inner light, I keep repeating financial patterns that don't serve me, believing the problem is always external — the client, the market, the economy. When I started looking at my own relationship with money with the same attention I gave to other people's problems, a lot of what looked like bad luck turned out, in fact, to be a behaviour I could change with awareness and a bit of courage.
A practice for this week
Today's practice is to ask for a real Hermit hour, even if it's only twenty minutes. Turn off your phone, sit in silence, and ask yourself one simple question: what do I know about myself that I avoid admitting? You don't have to answer quickly — the answer can take its time arriving, and that's fine. What matters is giving yourself that space of silence Lao Tzu described as the path to enlightenment, with no rush for results. Repeat this once a week, whenever you notice you're more focused on understanding others than on understanding yourself. The lantern only lights the next step, not the whole mountain — and that's already enough.
Closing the grimoire
I close this grimoire feeling like I'm still climbing the same mountain Lao Tzu described so many centuries ago, one step at a time, with the lantern I have. Tarot, through the Hermit, has never asked me to abandon the world — it only ever asked for enough of a pause to listen to myself before continuing to walk among others. If it's been a while since you truly stopped to listen to yourself, maybe a reading with me is a gentle way to begin that climb, unhurried, with no pressure. I don't promise instant enlightenment; I promise company while you light your own lantern. Good climbing this week, slow as it should be.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Hermit a card of sad loneliness?
Not necessarily. It speaks of stepping back by choice, a time of silence to listen to yourself, not of abandonment.
Is self-knowledge the same thing as therapy?
They complement each other, they don't replace each other. Tarot offers symbolic reflection, not clinical treatment.
How long does it take to really know yourself?
It isn't a process with a fixed deadline — Lao Tzu called it enlightenment because it's an ongoing path, not a final destination.
A card's meaning shifts with the question, position and context. No single card should be read as a verdict on its own.