Door Number 21: The Hermit Portal

I finished painting this portal on May 14, 2020, right around the time Jupiter went retrograde. I needed to wait for paint and glue to dry, but mostly, I needed better light for photographing it. Michigan rivals the Pacific Northwest sometimes! I love the gloomy days, but they don’t make for good indoor photographs. This “door” has been knocking on my subconscious for months. I thought I’d begin the weekend of March 29th, tapping into the world’s pandemic “hermit” mode; however, when the world goes crazy, I get busy. I’ve had so many sessions that I didn’t even start working on it until the week of May 4th.

As usual with these portals, astrological timing superseded my own plans. May 4, 2020 marked the actual crossquarter day of Beltane, when the Sun crosses 15 degrees Taurus. Beltane is a fire and purification festival, and also one of two key times the trooping faeries change residence — the other being Samhain, on or near Halloween. Even before I knew much about astrology, the doors — literal then, now sometimes canvas with painted doors — either featured astrological signatures or began or finished on key dates like Easter Sunday or Pentecost. This Hermit portal is Door Number 21:

The bottom isn’t crooked like it looks. I just can’t get it to photograph or crop right on my phone. The bottom and right edges are gray and the darker blue. The lighter blue is the wall behind it in my office. For some reason, whenever I try to photograph doors or canvases, something weird happens with the angles. By now, I’m used to it, but just to clarify, the portal itself ends with the gray rock and dark blue sky.

The quote reads, “If you open the door of wisdom, all other doors will be opened.” The quote’s author is Mehmet Murat ildan, and I found it a perfect synchronicity that his name translates to “praiseworthy wish.”

You can see Runic coding in the texture of the cloak, as well as an OS Rune on the Hermit’s staff. The top of the staff has a different style of OS, and both Runes refer to wisdom that comes through the mouth. It’s a “Rune of acceptance, Rune of giving.” According to Karl Hans Welz, “In many ceremonials, OS is used to receive and to accept energies. … In the practice of transferring healing energies and light, OS is one of the most powerful tools.” Also called Ansuz, the OS Rune connects to the God Odin, who often appeared on Earth in the guise of a traveling hermit. (Sometimes I think Tania Marie and I met him in Mendocino back in 2009, where I first learned Runes.)

I used a citrine crystal as the lantern’s light — and the lantern’s door is the “door” of this portal, the door of wisdom. Again, these paintings prove difficult to photograph, so I’ll include two of the lantern.

The first captures more of the glow of the crystal. In person, depending on the lighting, it really does look like flame. Citrine also connects with the Sun, the focus of Door Number 19, which features a heliodor crystal on the child’s solar plexus. While most people associate citrine with abundance and the solar plexus, citrine carries additional properties related to the spiritual path, alchemy, creativity, and energy exchange:

“The yellow hues of Citrine symbolize the spiritual qualities of joy, abundance, and transmutation. …

“In times of low to moderate stress, Citrine is a perfect ally for realigning your energies back into balance. In contrast, other, more powerful crystals may be necessary for more profound healings.

“But do not let that discourage you from its importance, for Citrine knows that it is in these first initial moments of confusion and dismay where we can most easily recalibrate our energies and move back onto our true paths.

“Citrine is also known as the Merchant’s Stone, due to its ability to transmute energies quickly and easily, facilitating transfers of energy from one to another. …

“Citrine also represents spiritual joy since it spreads positive, energetic light around its aura and is said to be one of only two crystals which do not need to be recharged or purified.

“Citrine can help facilitate prosperous occurrences all year round, and more importantly, it can help you transfer spiritual energies inside yourself at all times of the year.

“Many people do not realize this, but we are continually exchanging, borrowing, and giving energies to different parts of our body, depending on what our soul and spirit are needing to experience at any given time.

“These kinds of exchanges do not come cheaply. We become exhausted when these types of exchanges occur chaotically and without reason. Citrine can help balance and facilitate these types of energies.

“Finally, Citrine is a crystal replete with creative energy.” More on citrine here.

The next photograph gets the yellow light and shiny black lantern colors all wrong, but it shows how the light textures radiate, and it almost gets the cloak colors right. It also shows a different glow to the citrine, as well as the odd hand position I felt led to create:

As I painted this, I wanted to correct the hand and make it look more natural or comfortable, but I was “told” it was a variant of mushti mudra. In particular, this mudra can help process grief and trauma. I don’t know why I wasn’t supposed to paint it with the thumb all the way to the fourth finger, but I paint as I feel led. In any case, it seems related to the purification of the citrine “light,” a lifting up of the heavy energies of grief and trauma that can get in the way of wisdom. Paradoxically, sometimes our wounds lead us to withdraw from life, and then we gain wisdom through our solitary initiation.

Connected to the Hermit’s withdrawal in order to find a deeper connection, I painted the “9” number of the Hermit Card in Tarot as Roman numerals, IX. I did this because the I or IS Rune (pronounced eees) represents the Hermit. (I wrote about this IS connection in a post describing a mystical dream I had during a Pisces Full Moon.) The IS Rune represents standstill, the correct balance of ego, the Higher Self, and ice. In particular, the IS Rune allows access to frozen landscapes that could not normally be traversed — such as frozen lakes that lead to the hag’s cottage, or frozen rivers that can now be crossed. Turned on its side, the IS Rune becomes a bridge, and it also connects to the Goddess Isis, on the back of Door Number 20.

The X, also known as the Gifu, Gebo or Gyfu Rune keeps appearing to me in dreams. The Gebo Rune lore is extensive. It covers gifts of all sorts, as well as the equitable exchange of gifts. Gebo represents true partnership, whether in a romantic sense or working with the Divine. It kind of goes along with the Biblical idea (Luke 12:48): “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

The Hermit incurs a responsibility to share the wisdom he acquires, although he can share it in a different way than he receives the wisdom. I Runic coded the wooden brace on the backside of the canvas, but the Hermit reveals a simple light to the world. He keeps his eyes closed, focusing inward, as his light shines out. Gebo has no reversed meaning. The Sun portal also features the IS and Gebo Runes as XIX, 19, tying the Hermit portal to that one with not just the citrine/heliodor crystals, but also the Runes.

My favorite part of this portal is the owl:

When I began sketching the Hermit, the owl just wanted into the painting and onto his arm. I changed the colors a little to echo the gray rock/cliff, but I like how sweet his face turned out. I also like the shamanic connection between the Hermit and the owl, like the owl’s going to land on his outstretched arm that holds the light, but his feet point to the light. Owls can see in the dark. They symbolize wisdom, so it echoes the quote. Somehow, everything echoes or complements — the Full Moon with the lantern’s light, the closed eyes of the Hermit and the wide open eyes of the owl. I finished painting the owl on the Full Moon on May 7th — again, not on purpose. It just synchronized that way.

May 7th is David’s birthday, and May 14th, the day I finished the painting was my dad’s birthday, as well as the date I graduated college. I finished the Sun portal as my 46th birthday gift to myself last year, and today is the day before the 22nd anniversary of my 1998 life-changing car accident and traumatic brain injury.I didn’t plan things this way. It just happens with these paintings.

This portal also echoes the owl painting I did in 2010, which now hangs in our living room:

Because I download my paintings from dreams and vision, most of them end up interlocking in very tight, synchronous ways. The more I “unpack” their timing, quotes or Runic coding, the more I realize, “Ohhhh! That’s what I was painting then.” The doors and canvas portals continue to open in new ways even a decade after painting them. This 2010 painting followed me around many moves for many years, half finished as a daylight image before I switched it to the night and finished it within days. It goes along with an animal communication story I wrote about a mystical owl dream and an infinity sign in the snow. You can read The Backyard Owl here.

I don’t know the how or why of all these owls, Runes and portals. Maybe the Hermit will tell me some day.

It seems I’ve entered portal painting season, as someone already commissioned Door Number 22 as a mini “porta-portal,” and I have instructions to do the Magician for Door Number 23. Another person commissioned Door Number 24, so I’ll be busy with the paint brush! Thanks to everyone over the years who’s shown interest in this strange portal painting project of mine. You can find the others linked here.