What does The Hermit mean as someone's feelings?

Time alone, whether chosen or imposed. A relationship needing space rather than intensity, or a period of being single that is doing something rather than merely lasting.

The tradition is notably unbothered by this card in a love reading, which surprises people who draw it hoping for something warmer. Its position is that a period alone is a normal part of a life and frequently a productive one, and that the pressure to be partnered is not coming from the deck.

Within a relationship it describes one person needing distance without it meaning anything more than that. Reversed, emotional unavailability, or somebody who has withdrawn so far they cannot be reached. The distinction between needing space and disappearing is the whole question, and it usually turns on whether the person can say when they are coming back.

As somebody's feelings, it reads as private and considered rather than absent. Something is being thought about carefully and is not being shared yet, which is not the same as nothing being there.

A card drawn to represent another person's feelings does not read their mind. What it can do is describe the dynamic as it reaches you: what is being expressed, what the shape of the connection is from where you sit.

That is a real answer and a smaller one than the question usually wants. Readers who promise more than that are not being straight with you.

A better question with the same card: what is this connection actually like, and what do I need from it?

Step back. Solitude, reflection, a period of deliberately reduced input. The card also indicates a teacher or guide, and equally you becoming one. Answers arrive here through quiet rather than through consultation.

What it asks for is specific and slightly unfashionable: less advice, not more. The Hermit is the card for the person who has asked eleven people and is now more confused than when they started, and its instruction is to stop gathering and go and be alone with it.

Virgo brings method, so this is not drifting. A retreat under this card has a purpose and an end, and the difference between that and hiding is whether you could say what you went in for.

Isolation that has curdled, withdrawal as hiding, loneliness rather than solitude. Or the reverse: so much noise and company that no reflection is possible.

Both are common and they are opposites, which makes the surrounding cards unusually important. The first is somebody who went quiet for a reason that has expired and cannot find the way back; the second is somebody so surrounded that they have not had an unobserved thought in months.

The kinder and often correct reading is that the retreat has served its purpose and it is time to come back. The Hermit reversed is not always a warning. It is frequently permission.

Upright: solitude, introspection, guidance, inner light, withdrawal, searching

Reversed: isolation, loneliness, avoidance, lost, refusing help

• What would I know if I stopped consulting other people about it?
• Is my solitude restoring me or hiding me?
• What single step does my lantern actually light right now?