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As usual with these portals, astrological timing superseded my own plans.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 Hermit Archetype in a Time of Social Distance

As large swaths of humanity practice “social distancing” and “voluntary quarantine,” it becomes clear why The Hermit keeps knocking on me to become the next portal painting. This has been going on for months, but I always let paintings announce themselves in their own timing. Today, I got out nine (for Hermit’s #9) Tarot decks and pulled the Hermit card from each, so I could explore the archetype itself.

I laid them out on the mandala rug in my office and found this image so emblematic of society right now:

All the individual Hermits doing their own thing, shine light outward, but they also blend into a larger, connecting mandala. These larger, magical connections become more apparent (in focus) the more we each “blur” our usual perspectives and go deeper inside ourselves.

I felt led to post a lot during the early stages of the US crisis, and yes, I’m still doing sessions and March Specials still apply. If it seems like I’ve pulled back from blogging, though, you’re right. When I create a portal painting, I dive into the energies of that project. The Hermit will be Divine Doorway Number 21 in this series. A canvas awaits this painting, so I’ll need to create my own “door” on it. We’ll see what kind of light comes out of the solitary darkness. It feels like pondering and painting The Hermit now may somehow assist collective energies in pulling the deepest wisdom from this time apart.

Meanwhile, here are a few favorite links about the Hermit:

Tarot Teachings

Powerful Full Moon in Pisces (with discussion of the IS Rune and the Hermit)

The Hermit: Integration and Introspection

Enjoy this sacred time and milk it for all it’s worth. This is a golden opportunity for the collective to receive wisdom and blessings before harsher circumstances force even more isolation. I pray enough people embrace the not-so-gentle nudge to go deep inside and see what they find.

 

Garden Update: Misty Morn, Faery Godmother, Cat Familiar, and Osage Orange

I’ve been in hermit mode here — doing intuitive sessions, taking walks, exercising, cooking myself on the BioMat and completing an astonishing breadth and depth of studies before I shift my focus to fiction writing on November 1. With Samhain on October 31st traditionally celebrated as the Celtic New Year, it somehow feels appropriate to return to fiction after what became an 8-year hiatus. Synchronously, it’s also the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which I might do again this year — not to finish a novel in that time, but to tap into the collective discipline of word counts and new writing habits.

Today’s misty morning captures my overall mood the past couple months:

With David still

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit

This is a fascinating read! Thanks, Bo!

The only thing that I would say is, “What makes anyone so sure this is the last true hermit? A true hermit, for sure, but the only reason we know about him is that he got caught stealing. Who’s to say there aren’t many more such hermits?”

Click here to read “The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit.”