The Hermit

Correspondences

Number

IX

Hebrew letter

י Yod, “Hand” (value 10)

Attribution

♍︎ Virgo

Golden Dawn title

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

Thoth

The Hermit

Marseille

L’Hermite

Case’s key word

Response

Path on the Tree

The 20th path, joining Chesed and Tiphareth

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.”