9. WITHDRAWN (Hermit)
Crow says:
The Great Work stays unfinished
when preparation never ends.
The Hermit Reversed — Virgo
(Scroll past lyrics to read about the song)
[INTRO]
Ghost of Withdrawn meets its end.
Architect of distance.
Guardian of the unopened hand.
Hermit withdrawn,
Illumination persists.
[VERSE]
I've been called dispassionate,
even cold.
Ghost said:
"Stay at arm's length.
Stay unreachable."
Picky, perfectionist —
rain check while I measure it.
Potential postponed.
Dumb guardian not replying,
so I isolate.
Self-edit.
Phone turned over.
I can be reached
but I won't be.
[PRE-CHORUS]
Readiness decides timing.
Crow says:
The hand opens.
[CHORUS]
Hermit. Withdrawn —
Self-contained.
Hermit. Withdrawn —
Withdrawn took my timing,
waiting became the thing.
Ghost the ghost,
withdraw from withdrawal.
[BRIDGE]
Ghost prefers shade,
so I let desire fade.
Kept the seed in my pocket.
I kept it clean.
Waiting for a better day…
Crow says:
The Great Work stays unfinished
when preparation never ends.
[PRE-CHORUS]
(repeat)
[CHORUS]
(repeat)
[OUTRO]
Crow says:
Preservation served its purpose.
Preparation ends.
The ghost steps aside.
Lyrics are here. The full blog — about the ghost, the tarot, the body, the blessing — is still unfolding. Check back another day. I'm still writing. You're still welcome.
🐦⬛
Card & Ghost
Tarot Card:The Hermit (Reversed)
Thoth Name:The Hermit (Unchanged)
My Ghost:Withdrawn
Zodiac:Virgo · Planet:Mercury
Virgo energy refines, analyzes, perfects. Mercury rules the mind. The Hermit carries the lamp inward — but Withdrawn keeps the light to herself.
Hebrew Letter:Yod (י) — hand, seed, point, the smallest letter
Path:20 (Chesed to Tiphareth)
What It Means Reversed:
I carried the sun in my lamp and never let it touch the room. I prepared for a life I never stepped into.
About the Song
I learned how to disappear without leaving.
Not a dramatic vanishing — just a slow, polite retreat. Eyes down. Voice stored. Phone turned over. I can be reached, but I won't be. I call it needing less.
The Hermit card always seemed like a wise old man on a mountain, holding a lamp, searching for truth. I wanted to be that. I wanted solitude to be holy. But somewhere along the way, my solitude stopped feeding me. It just kept me safe.
Withdrawn is the ghost who confuses depth with absence. She calls withdrawal wisdom. She calls silence cleanliness. She keeps the seed in her pocket so long she forgets it was meant to grow.
This song is the moment I admit that guarding can become hoarding. That waiting can become stalling.
What This Ghost Is
Withdrawn is the version of me who leaves early to avoid being left. She learned that staying invites loss, that voice creates risk, that being seen requires constant change. So she edits herself into absence. She curates access instead of participating. She stays present while becoming unreachable.
In daily life, Withdrawn:
Answers a question with a pause long enough for the other person to fill the silence
Keeps a reply drafted in her head for three days, then deletes it
Schedules something and feels relief when the other person cancels
Says "maybe next time" and means "probably not"
She is a migratory nervous system. Adaptation replaces rhythm. Shedding replaces choosing. Silence replaces voice.
A ghost is not the one who hurt me. It's the self that flinched and stayed. Who I became to survive. A decision loop dressed in praise. Withdrawn was never the wound — she was the shape I took to survive without being seen.
Where It Lives in the Body
Withdrawn lives in my hands.
Fingers curl inward when I walk into a room. I keep my palms closed, as if gripping a seed that never gets planted.
She lives in my throat.
Words arrive, then pause. Sentences form, then fold. The sound stays inside. Louise Hay associates throat issues with suppressed self-expression — the voice that waits too long learns to stay quiet.
She lives in my metabolism.
Energy surges, then stalls. I push, then I collapse. Reinvention followed by disappearance. My body cycles between urgency and freeze. John Sarno's TMS work identifies chronic fatigue and metabolic swings as distraction patterns — the body creating physical symptoms to keep awareness away from suppressed feeling.
If these patterns continue, the body finds more permanent expressions. A throat that never speaks becomes a thyroid that forgets its rhythm. My husband is a Virgo — Mercury's precision, the Hermit's solitude. He has Graves' disease. The thyroid turned against itself. I see the connection clearly.
Withdrawn also lives in my immune system.
When I’m reversed: low-grade infections. Slow healing. Frequent colds. Louise Hay writes that immune disorders reflect a sense of internal warfare — the self turning against itself. Withdrawn's habit of self-editing, of holding back, of rejecting her own voice, creates that war. The body follows.
The Imbalanced Ghost (Withdrawn Reversed)
If the Hermit upright carries the lamp outward — illuminating, guiding, returning — then Withdrawn is the lamp turned inward. Light that feeds only itself. Wisdom that never travels.
Belief patterns of Withdrawn:
"If I stay still, nothing can hurt me."
"Being unreachable keeps me intact."
"Preparation is safer than participation."
"I lose less when I leave early."
Somatic / TMS correlations:
Hands — fingers curled inward, hesitation before reaching
Lens:"Strength stays folded inside the fingers. The grip remembers safety, not release."
Throat — words that arrive and pause, sentences that fold
Lens: "Speech makes me vulnerable. Silence keeps me love-able"
Metabolism — energy swings between urgency and collapse
Lens: "My body can't find a rhythm because I trained it to expect change."
Eyes — hold a glance, then release it. Look long enough to seem present, then drift.
Lens: "Seeing means being seen. I'd rather watch from the edge."
When Withdrawn shows up for me:
I leave messages unanswered for days.
Someone asks a simple question. I give a short answer and turn the conversation back to them.
I rehearse what I want to say, then say nothing. The moment passes.
The cure is not more walls. One sentence finished instead of folded. One plan kept instead of cancelled.
Crow says: "You don't have to perform. Just let the room know you're still here."
Tarot & Magick: The Hermit Reversed
In Crowley's Thoth system, The Hermit is attributed to the letter Yod — the hand, the seed, the smallest letter from which all others grow. Yod is the spermatozoon, the point of creation held in potential. The Hermit carries a lamp whose center is the Sun. He walks the path from Chesed (Mercy) to Tiphareth (Beauty) — from expansion to the heart.
Upright, The Hermit is wisdom that descends. Light that illuminates the way for others. A guardian who opens the gate.
Reversed, the guardian becomes the gate itself — immovable, indistinguishable from the barrier. Wisdom curdles into self-protection. The journey from mercy to the heart stalls. Expansion contracts. The point never extends into a line. Reversed hermit mistakes isolation for insight. She studies the door instead of opening it.
In Crowley's invocation, the Hermit appears as "dumb Guardian" — not stupid, but silent. A guardian who watches without speaking, who holds the gate without announcing himself. This is the Hermit at his most contained: power stored, voice withheld, potential kept safe.
In the reversed state — Withdrawn — that silence hardens. The guardian forgets the gate opens both ways. The seed remains in the pocket past every season. The hand that could wave stays at the side. The field that waits for planting stays empty.
Not because the seed lacks life. Because the guardian fears what grows.
Dumb here means mute by choice, not lack of intelligence. The Hermit chooses silence as devotion. Withdrawn inherits that silence as reflex. What was sacred vigilance becomes habitual hiding.
Crow says: "A guardian who never opens the door becomes a warden. The gate was never a prison. You just forgot the handle."
Correspondences (from my study notes):
Hebrew letter: Yod (י) — hand, seed, point, the smallest letter
Planet: Mercury (Virgo's ruler) — analysis, refinement, discernment
Element: Earth — receptive, fertile, waiting
Traditional Animal: The spermatozoon (as seed of life)
My Chosen Animal: The green anole lizard. Drops its tail to escape, isolates to regenerate. The new tail grows back — but the hiding outlasts the healing.
Crow says: "You dropped your tail and ran. Now you're fully formed and still crouched in the brush."
Why This Song Belongs Here
After Bender — who straightened her spine and stopped carrying the room — comes Withdrawn. Bender learned to stand. Withdrawn learns to be seen.
The first ghosts (Hesitator through Rider) were about survival engines — freezing, deflecting, escaping, smothering, controlling, guarding, splitting, sprinting. Bender counted the cost of bending. Withdrawn faces the cost of hiding.
The first ghosts built walls. Bender counted the cost of bending. Withdrawn faces the cost of hiding.
What comes next is Spinner — the ghost who spins patterns without ever landing. But Spinner only makes sense after I stop hiding long enough to feel the wheel turn. First, I have to risk visibility. Then I can feel the motion.
Crow says: "You learned to be alone well. Now learn to be seen without disappearing."
What This Song Is
It asks one question: Are you hiding or healing?
It teaches that silence can be wisdom or erasure. That waiting can be patience or paralysis. That a hand exists to open.
Crow says: "Solitude is a teacher. Seclusion is a trap. Learn the difference before the door locks from the inside."
What I Learned
Withdrawn taught me that I don't have to leave early to stay safe. That my voice is not a risk — it's a bridge. That the seed in my pocket was never meant to stay there.
I learned that solitude serves me when it answers back. That hiding eats its host. That the door opens from the inside.
When Withdrawn Shows Up
I know Withdrawn is active when I turn my phone face-down and leave the room before it buzzes again. When I keep a reply drafted in my head for three days, then delete it. When I schedule something and feel relief when the other person cancels. When I say "maybe next time" and mean "probably not."
I check for:
Where am I calling withdrawal wisdom?
What seed am I holding past its season?
Am I hiding or healing today?
What would happen if I let the hand open?
What I've learned from others:
Crowley (via The Book of Thoth): "Most secret seed of all Life's serpent plan, Virgin, the Hermit goes, dumb Guardian." The Hermit carries creation — but reversed, the seed stays locked.
Lon Milo DuQuette: Study The Hermit alongside The Devil. Withdrawal and attachment are two sides of the same coin. Avoidance feeds fixation.
Carl Jung: Introversion that produces wholeness is wisdom. Introversion used as defense is exile. Withdrawn confuses the two.
Louise Hay: The throat holds unspoken truth. The thyroid stores suppressed expression. Withdrawn keeps her voice in storage.
Steven Ray Ozanich (TMS): Withdrawal can be a symptom strategy — the body choosing silence as protection. The cure is presence, not more preparation.
Questions I ask myself:
Where did I edit myself instead of speaking today?
What am I waiting for that already arrived?
Is this solitude feeding me or hiding me?
Blessing
May you stop guarding the seed past its season.
May your hand remember how to open.
May your voice leave before you talk yourself out of it.
May solitude feed you without hiding you.
May you step forward — not fully prepared, just present.
May the lamp face outward. May the door open from the inside.
A little crow's on the wire, keeping watch over you. 🐦⬛
A Note from My Study
I'm still learning. I don't have this down. I'm still living in the gap, still trying to become more like the music I write. I write for myself — so I can study, so I can hear the direction I want to go.
I'm working from Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, the deck that became my study guide for this album. The correspondences (Hebrew letters, paths, planets) come from that tradition. These notes are just what I've gathered. If they help someone else, that's a gift. If not, they're just breadcrumbs from my own walk.
Withdrawn taught me that the seed was never meant to stay in my pocket. Now I'm learning to plant it.
— Thank you for witnessing.
Loui Crow
