In the universe of the Farmers, the Farmer of A Hope is the one that harvests waiting: the “tomorrow will be better”, the answer that is about to come, the heaven that will help in the end. Card XVII is in no way a bad card. It speaks of a real trust, but a trust that bides its time instead of moving forward, and it invites you to go out and meet what you are hoping for.
A spiky hood, a ticket window in place of a face
Look at its head first. The Farmer of A Hope wears a tall verdigris hood, like oxidized copper. It rises in five points, like a soft crown or ears straining toward a distant sound, and falls back onto the shoulders in ragged fringes. In place of a face, a small rectangular window rimmed with gold, behind which a row of bars or teeth can just be made out. It brings to mind a ticket window, or the slot of a mailbox: a place where you wait for something to arrive.
The rest of the costume plays on two colors. A long coat of golden yellow, marbled like an autumn leaf, with immense sleeves lined in red; its hem is cut into points. Beneath it, a verdigris skirt falls to the ankles, jagged as well, over yellow trousers. The slippers are green, with curled toes. The hands, almost black, very long, hang on either side, fingers curved. They take nothing: they are ready to receive.
On the card, the silhouette stands out against the same engraved circle as its brothers, between twisted vines. The edge carries three words: Important on the left, Waiting on the right, Help at its feet. Read together, they sum up the card: something important is being waited for, and you are counting on help to obtain it.
Its place in the round says a lot. Reading the Atanor from the Black to the White, you find it between the Farmer of A Suffering and the Farmer of A Tranquility. Hope is a bridge: it is often born of a sorrow, and it reaches toward a calm. Its back is yellow, like that of A Suffering; its other neighbor, A Tranquility, has a green back. So it stands on the border between two families.
What it harvests: the two Honeys of waiting
We instinctively associate hope with the light Honey. The first volume of Les Fermiers (The Farmers), currently published in French, confirms it: hope produces Hab-Honey, the energy of light emotions, rarer and more volatile than its dark cousin. But the same book immediately describes the rest of the cycle: with every broken promise, disappointment produces Ba-Honey; then a new sign revives hope, and it all starts over. That is why you can picture the Farmer of A Hope as a harvester of both Honeys. It does not live on hope alone, nor on disappointment alone, but on their alternation.
In this universe, it does not manufacture our expectations. Hoping is human, and often beautiful. Picture it rather as the one that keeps the distance between hope and action: it makes the right moment always seem a little further off, it makes waiting sweeter than acting, it whispers that it will be easier tomorrow. As long as hope does not turn into a step, it remains harvestable, and it renews itself all on its own.
Nothing sinister here: this Farmer wears the face of patience. Three scenes to picture it.
The phone turned face down
The interview went well; they told you “we’ll get back to you”. Since then, the phone has been lying on the table, screen against the wood, and you turn it over every ten minutes. Each vibration sends up a small wave, each advertisement lets it fall back. The whole day organizes itself around a call that hasn’t come yet. You can imagine the Farmer of A Hope leaning over this back-and-forth, gathering the waves one by one.
The list of “whens”
When the kids are grown, I’ll take up the piano again. When I’ve changed jobs, I’ll take care of myself. When the other person finally understands, everything will be better between us. Each “when” is a sincere promise, and each one pushes life back a notch. This list never ages: you copy it out from year to year, the same lines in the same future tense.
The awaited sign
A project has been sleeping in a folder for a long time. Everything is ready, or nearly. You are waiting for a sign: an encounter, a coincidence, a piece of good news that will say “now is the time”. Sometimes the sign comes, and you find it isn’t clear enough. In the Farmers’ reading, this waiting for the green light is a very steady yield.
“It is said of you”: loving to believe, loving to wait
In the original French deck, this sentence does something unusual: where its two neighbors, A Suffering and A Tranquility, speak to you directly, this one speaks of “the querent”, in the third person, as if the card took a step back to look at you from a distance. That is exactly the position hope makes you take: you stand a little apart from your own life, a spectator of what is to come.
Then there is the verb love. The text does not say “you are forced to wait”; it says that you love it. Believing and waiting have a flavor. Waiting keeps every possibility open; action makes only one of them real, and risks failing. It is easy to understand why waiting is preferred.
In the Atanor, “It is said of you” names what is being harvested. What is harvested here is not your faith, nor your optimism: it is the time spent holding them in suspension.
A Hope on the three axes
Love
- Character who dreams and is a hopeless romantic.
- Character who thinks tomorrow will be better for their relationship.
- Character who is waiting for love.
The card does not make fun of this tenderness. Being a hopeless romantic means keeping alive the capacity to be moved. But look at the tenses: the dream, tomorrow, the waiting. The love described here is conjugated in the future. Yet a relationship you hope will improve “tomorrow” is still being lived today, with today’s gestures and today’s silences. And the love you are waiting for sometimes needs you to step out and meet it.
Work
- Character who waits for someone to help them.
- Character who is too distant from others.
- Character with a certain faith in beliefs.
On the axis of action, the Help of the edge words takes on its full meaning. Waiting for someone to help you is not a flaw: sometimes it is a fair assessment of your strength. But the second sentence sheds light on the first. Someone who waits for help while remaining “too distant from others” is waiting for something they are not asking for. The help cannot find the address. The third sentence, more sober, speaks of faith in beliefs: a project carried by a conviction more than by a plan.
Soul
- Character who is a believer.
- Character who is optimistic about the future.
- Character who thinks that "heaven will help them".
The last sentence is a proverb with a piece cut off. The full saying goes: “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” The card keeps only the second half, and that is its whole teaching. It casts no doubt on faith or optimism, which are strengths. It simply distinguishes a faith that walks from a faith that waits. The first moves forward in trust; the second hands the whole journey over to heaven and stays on the doorstep.
Recognizing it at work in yourself
Hope is pleasant, and therefore hard to observe. A few signs of this Farmer at work:
- A held breath: you breathe from the top of your chest, like someone watching a door.
- A body leaning forward, toward the screen, toward the window, toward what is about to happen, rather than settled in its chair.
- Detailed scenarios of the future, replayed with pleasure, while the first concrete step still has no date.
- The brief drop when the news doesn’t come, followed by a new hope, very quickly recharged. The cycle says more than any of its moments.
- The word “soon”, which comes up often and never gets any more precise.
None of these signs is a fault. They simply show that the energy has gone off toward tomorrow, and that little is left for today. Book II describes this bright trap gently: a joy that depends on the outside can be given, taken back, promised, then postponed. You will find it in detail in Hab-Honey, the sweetest trap.
What the card invites you to do
The invitation does not ask you to give up hope. It asks you to make it walk. “Going out to meet” means crossing the distance the Farmer keeps up: writing the message rather than watching for theirs, asking the question rather than guessing the answer, opening the folder rather than waiting for the sign.
In the universe of the Farmers, this passage has a name: the Third Honey. Neither the hope that soars nor the disappointment that falls back, but a full presence to what is here, now, and which acts from there. Hope does not disappear in it; it changes scale. It stops being a grand tomorrow and becomes a small gesture today. The first volume, in its final pages, sets the tone for itself:
You don’t fight the Farmer of A Hope; you don’t turn against your dreams. You see the moment when hope starts to wait, and you take a step. In this reading, a hope that has become a gesture no longer has much to offer the harvest.
A small practice: the step of the day
Each time you catch yourself saying or thinking “when…”, stop for a second. Ask yourself: what is the smallest possible step toward it today? A ten-minute step, no more. Take it, or don’t, it doesn’t matter at first. Simply observe the difference in your body between the two states: the hope that waits, breath held; the step taken, however tiny. Note what you feel, without drawing any conclusion. Once you have felt that difference, you will recognize it on your own from then on.
A Hope in a reading
A luminous card, card XVII nonetheless promises nothing: the deck, held with a smile, only sheds light on the way you wait.
In the Three-Axis Reading. In Love, it describes a heart turned toward tomorrow: a relationship you hope to see change, or a love you wait for without moving toward it. In Work, a project suspended on help, on a green light, on a person you haven’t yet reached out to. In Soul, a real faith and optimism, which often lack only the first step.
In the Wheel. Near the Black, at the start of the path, it can reveal what hides behind a block: a waiting that has long stood in for action. At the heart of the path, it is a relay: the hope that gives you the strength to keep going. Just before the White, its invitation becomes the last step: stop waiting, go out to meet.
With its neighbors. Drawn with A Suffering, it traces the movement from sorrow toward the hoped-for way out; ask yourself then whether the hope is a path or a new dream. Drawn with A Tranquility, the reading can be very gentle, but beware of the double rest: one waits, the other says that “No action is required”, and nothing moves. To read a card in a real spread, the full text of the card remains the reference.
