Yod · IX The Hermit

Correspondences

Letter

י Yod (יוד), “Hand”

Value

10

Kind

Single letter (one of the twelve Singles, given to the signs of the zodiac)

Attribution

♍︎ Virgo

Joins

Chesed (4) and Tiphareth (6)

Tarot trump

IX · Waite: The Hermit · Thoth: The Hermit · Marseille: L’Hermite

Golden Dawn title (Book T)

The Magus of the Voice of Power; the Prophet of the Eternal

Lévi’s attribution (1855)

X La Roue de Fortune

Case’s key word

Response

Colours

King: Yellowish green · Queen: Slate grey

Gods (777)

Egyptian: Isis (as virgin) · Greek: Attis · Roman: Ceres, Adonis, Vesta, Flora · Hindu: the gopi-girls; the Lord of Yoga

Animals

Virgin; anchorite; any solitary person or animal

Plants

Snowdrop; lily; narcissus

Precious stones

Peridot

Perfumes

Narcissus

Magical weapon

The lamp and wand (virile force reserved); the bread

The letter

Yod, the hand, is the smallest letter, little more than a point, and every other letter begins from a stroke shaped like it. It is the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, the Father, the seed. Its value is 10, the number of the sephiroth. Case gives it the faculty of coition (sexual love), Yod being the seed; the Hermit keeps that seed and turns it to light. The Kabbalists say the whole Torah is written with the one letter Yod in its different shapes.

On the Tree

The 20th path descends from Chesed to Tiphareth: the Masters’ compassion brought into the heart of the Adept. Its 32 Paths name, the Intelligence of Will, shows it as the path where the Primordial Wisdom is known.

The Hermit in the Waite deck

Waite’s Hermit is an old man in a grey cloak standing on a snowy peak, holding up a lantern in which a six-pointed star shines, with a staff in his other hand. Waite insists that he is not seeking but has found, and that the lamp is a light for others. Case’s key word is response: the Hermit is the goal of the path, the light that answers when the seeker climbs.

The Hermit in the Thoth deck

Crowley’s Hermit is wrapped in a red cloak, bending over a field of wheat, holding a lamp whose light is the Sun. Before him is a spermatozoon (Yod as seed), behind him the three-headed Cerberus, tamed, and the Orphic egg wrapped by the serpent. Crowley links the Hermit to Mercury, the Logos, and to the secret seed which is the light of the world: “the Hermit is the most secret and the most fertile.”

Where this path leads

• חסד Chesed (4)
• תפארת Tiphareth (6)

Read further

• The Hermit on Wikipediahistory and iconography of the card
• Sepher Yetzirah and the 32 Paths of WisdomW. Wynn Westcott, trans., 1887
• The Kabbalah UnveiledS. L. MacGregor Mathers, from Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata, 1887
• Liber 777 RevisedAleister Crowley, 1909/1955
• The Book of ThothAleister Crowley, 1944
• The Golden DawnIsrael Regardie, ed., 1937–40
• A Garden of PomegranatesIsrael Regardie, 1932
• The Mystical QabalahDion Fortune, 1935
• The Pictorial Key to the TarotA. E. Waite, 1910
• The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the AgesPaul Foster Case, 1947
• A Practical Guide to Qabalistic SymbolismGareth Knight, 1965

Also in the background throughout: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (1974) and Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), for the Jewish tradition as historians understand it; Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah (1990); Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden (1977), for the Qliphoth; Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot (1983).