Buddha Tarot - The Old Man and the Sadhu (IX. The Hermit)

This card is an interesting departure from the standard Hermit card. There are two figures on this card, although each is alone and looking in opposite directions. The old man looks into the past; the sadhu—the actual subject of the card--to the future. (These were the sights that Siddhartha saw on his first and fourth trips out of the palace.) At its most mundane level this card can represent the need to be alone. At its highest level, it represents meditation and wisdom.

This card also provides a note of caution that not all old men are sadhus. Wisdom does not automatically come with age, and without right effort, one can pass a long life in ignorance.

I have a hard time reading this card. I want to talk about the meaning and the story behind it, but my first point about it is that I don't find it to be a good Tarot card. I'm used to the Hermit card having a very inward, personal meaning, almost always referring to the querent him/herself. With two separate characters present at once, smushed together into one card, I don't know which to concentrate on, and then, if I choose one, half the card is missing from the reading.

Usually, I'm glad I didn't splurge on the companion book, because I figure that using actual Buddhist sources to enhance the meanings would work a lot better, but when it comes to Tarot technicalities, I wish I had more from Robert Place than these wimpy little blurbs in the LWB.

I kind of like Place's note about how, if IX is in between two cards, the one on the left relates to the Old Man, and the one on the right relates to the Sadhu. That makes it a new but interesting Tarot situation. But that's not always the case. Most of the time, I find the dual figures on this card very difficult to read.

JonMAblaze said:

I have a hard time reading this card. I want to talk about the meaning and the story behind it, but my first point about it is that I don't find it to be a good Tarot card. I'm used to the Hermit card having a very inward, personal meaning, almost always referring to the querent him/herself. With two separate characters present at once, smushed together into one card, I don't know which to concentrate on, and then, if I choose one, half the card is missing from the reading.

Usually, I'm glad I didn't splurge on the companion book, because I figure that using actual Buddhist sources to enhance the meanings would work a lot better, but when it comes to Tarot technicalities, I wish I had more from Robert Place than these wimpy little blurbs in the LWB.

I kind of like Place's note about how, if IX is in between two cards, the one on the left relates to the Old Man, and the one on the right relates to the Sadhu. That makes it a new but interesting Tarot situation. But that's not always the case. Most of the time, I find the dual figures on this card very difficult to read.

Click to expand...

My impression is that this is one of the cards where Place has to strain the most to get all the major Buddhist icons into the majors. I mean, it would make sense to have old age, sickness, death, and the sadhu each on a separate card as the four sights that Siddhartha saw. It would also make sense to have one card that has all four sights on one. I agree that it seems contrived and, frankly, a little arbitrary, to stick the old man and the sadhu on one card and then have the sick man and the corpse on individual cards. Why not put the sick man with the dead man and figure out another way to depict the Hanging Man?

That having been said, I don't find this card that hard to read (ignorance in my case being bliss, I suppose). The Place commentary that I did splurge on (used at amazon.com, if I am remembering correctly) points out that the Hermit image relates to Father Time and hence to the classical god Saturn (you probably knew all this already). The Hermit is aloof, but he is not in seclusion alone in a cave. On RWS he's out with a lantern. I recall reading a comment from somebody else, somewhere, that the Hermit is always depicted as being on the move outdoors, not holed up in a cave (or on top of a pillar like the Desert Fathers). I suppose that could just be to light his own lonely way, but I always interpreted this card as containing a hint that the Hermit was looking for someone. I suspect this is because I associate the figure of a man with a lantern with Diogenes, not Father Time, Saturn OR the sadhu for that matter.

So continuing to think out loud, on the RWS card the second person is...the querent or the reader. The Hermit might imply a the presence of a second person. YMMV.