MAJOR ARCANA · TRUMP IX
The Hermit
Tarot card meaning
UPRIGHT
Solitude, introspection, inner guidance, wisdom.
REVERSED
Isolation, loneliness, withdrawal from life.
The card
An old man in a grey cloak stands on a snowy peak holding a lantern containing a six-pointed star, lighting the way for those who follow.
The Hermit is trump IX of the twenty-two trumps of the Major Arcana.
In the Golden Dawn's attributions it carries the Hebrew letter Yod (י), “hand”, and the sign of Virgo. On the Tree of Life it is path 20, joining Chesed and Tiphareth.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: The Hermit, IX.
In Waite's words
Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck that Pamela Colman Smith drew, and explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). His text, with his spelling:
DIVINATORY MEANINGS Prudence, circumspection; also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption.
REVERSED Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.
The picture and its symbolism
The variation from the conventional models in this card is only that the lamp is not enveloped partially in the mantle of its bearer, who blends the idea of the Ancient of Days with the Light of the World. It is a star which shines in the lantern. I have said that this is a card of attainment, and to extend this conception the figure is seen holding up his beacon on an eminence. Therefore the Hermit is not, as Court de Gebelin explained, a wise man in search of truth and justice; nor is he, as a later explanation proposes, an especial example of experience. His beacon intimates that "where I am, you also may be."
It is further a card which is understood quite incorrectly when it is connected with the idea of occult isolation, as the protection of personal magnetism against admixture. This is one of the frivolous renderings which we owe to Éliphas Lévi. It has been adopted by the French Order of Martinism and some
of us have heard a great deal of the Silent and Unknown Philosophy enveloped by his mantle from the knowledge of the profane. In true Martinism, the significance of the term Philosophe inconnu was of another order. It did not refer to the intended concealment of the Instituted Mysteries, much less of their substitutes, but—like the card itself—to the truth that the Divine Mysteries secure their own protection from those who are unprepared.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Part II § 2 and Part III § 3. Public domain; text from the 1922 printing on Wikisource.
Related cards
The numbered cards it governs
Eight of Pentacles: a decan of Virgo · Nine of Pentacles: a decan of Virgo · Ten of Pentacles: a decan of Virgo
In three historical decks
The same card as it was painted in fifteenth-century Milan, printed in the French pattern of the Tarot de Marseille, and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider–Waite–Smith deck.
In the Tarot de Marseille: L'Ermite, IX.
Learn more in the lessons
- The Twenty-Two Paths & the Tarot · 18 min
- The Major Arcana Journey · 18 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
Images: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain); the RWS1909 scans on Wikimedia Commons. Lequart, Paris, c. 1890 (public domain); scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), via Wikimedia Commons. Attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, mid-15th century (public domain); scans by David Madore, via Wikimedia Commons.