It seems every day some idiot out there does or says something stupid to remind me why I am a hermit, why I’ve pretty much withdrawn from society to walk a more solitary path. I love humanity as an abstract concept, but individually there are very few people I actually like.

I’ve been a hermit since my divorce. To be honest, I was becoming a hermit long before my divorce, and my increasing withdrawal from society may indeed have contributed to my divorce. But I also feel that at this point in my life, the solitude is desperately needed, not just for the healing process, but also for spiritual renewal. My marriage to a skeptical, materialistic, psychic void nearly sucked the spiritual life out of me, and its time to reclaim what I once had.

There was a time when, in many cultures, the hermit was revered, respected, sometimes feared. A person who withdrew from the world in order to commune with nature, gain a closer relationship with God, or seek spiritual awareness, was a person to be venerated, considered holy.

Some of China’s greatest poets were recluses, writing poems inspired by the beauty of their surroundings, the quietude of their souls and the whisper that rises from the depths of a lonesome heart.

Christianity has a long history of reclusive characters - Paul, Antony, Cuthbert are just a few of the more famous hermits of the Christian tradition.

In the tarot, the Hermit represents a period of contemplation that brings clarity. It is the card of truth, knowledge and introspection, of the inner light that guides us through the darkness, of wisdom, depth and maturity of thought and emotion. The Hermit is the merciless truth that penetrates the mind and soul, the still small voice of Gnosis that both prognosticates and prepares us for the deep changes to come.

But today the hermit is considered more of an aberration. Those who choose solitude are thought to be eccentric, anti-social, or even mentally ill. The crazy cat-lady, the mountain-man, the psycho loner with only a computer for company - these are the hermit archetypes for our time, stripped of their nobility by a voyeuristic society that distrusts solitude. Demands for privacy are viewed with suspicion, and silence is the worst crime of all. A culture so attuned to back-ground noise - car alarms, traffic sounds, muzak, planes overhead, and the incessant electric hum that forms the auditor backdrop to every city - distrusts silence. Perhaps even fears it, for in silence comes the voice of the self.

I think people are afraid that voice won’t have too much to say.