A solitary old man stands at the summit of a mountain. In one hand he carries a staff. In the other, a lantern containing a six-pointed star. His head is bowed, the landscape beneath him unseen.
This is the Hermit of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, published in 1909, and one of the most enduring images in modern tarot.
Yet the figure did not begin on a mountain, and he did not always carry a lantern.
The history of the Hermit is instead a remarkable example of how a symbol can survive for centuries while its meaning gradually changes.
Before the Hermit, There Was Time
Tarot emerged in northern Italy during the fifteenth century. The earliest surviving references date to the 1440s and 1450s, and the cards were originally created for a trick-taking game rather than divination. Among the finest surviving examples are the lavish Visconti-Sforza cards produced for the Milanese court.
Within that deck appears an elderly, white-bearded man.
Today we might recognize him as an ancestor of the Hermit, but the Morgan Library & Museum identifies the card as Time.
The distinction is important.
This man does not hold a lantern. He holds an hourglass. His long white beard and stooped posture represent old age, while the falling sand provides an unmistakable reminder of passing time. The Morgan describes the figure specifically as a personification of Time.
He belongs to a much larger Renaissance visual tradition. Concepts such as Love, Death, Fortune, Justice, and Time were frequently represented as human figures carrying recognizable attributes. Tarot's earliest artists drew upon this existing symbolic language rather than inventing an entirely new secret system of imagery.
The old man therefore began not simply as a seeker withdrawing from society, but as an embodiment of something no one can escape.
Time passes.
Age comes.
The hourglass empties.
From Hourglass to Lantern
As tarot traveled and changed over the following centuries, so did its imagery.
The elderly figure survived, but eventually the hourglass gave way to a lamp or lantern. The emphasis shifted with it. An image concerned primarily with age and passing time could now suggest searching, illumination, knowledge, and wisdom.
Those later associations became especially powerful in the deck created by Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith.
Their Hermit, numbered IX, stands alone on a snowy height. He carries a staff and holds a lantern before him. Inside it Smith drew a six-pointed star.
It is tempting to label that symbol automatically as the Star of David or Seal of Solomon. Historically, however, the six-pointed star has appeared in multiple religious, decorative, magical, and cultural contexts. More importantly for interpreting this particular card, Waite himself simply described it as a star shining in the lantern. He did not identify it as the Star of David in his explanation of the card.
That restraint actually makes the image more interesting.
The essential symbol is the light.
Why the Hermit Stands Above Us
Waite's explanation of the Hermit challenges another common assumption about the card.
The Hermit is not merely hiding from the world.
Waite described the card as one of attainment and deliberately placed the figure upon an eminence holding up his beacon. Most revealingly, he explained the message of that beacon as an invitation: the Hermit has reached a place that others may also reach.
The mountain therefore matters.
The Hermit's solitude is not necessarily an end in itself. He has climbed above the ordinary landscape to gain perspective, but the lantern prevents the image from becoming simply one of withdrawal.
He still carries something outward.
That creates one of the card's most compelling contradictions.
The Hermit is alone, but his light is visible.
He withdraws, yet he carries a beacon.
He turns inward, but what he discovers can point beyond himself.
Solitude and the Value of Quiet
Modern interpretations often associate the Hermit with introspection, contemplation, and periods of deliberate solitude. Those meanings should not be projected backward onto every fifteenth-century version of the card, but they fit naturally with the transformation the image underwent.
The hourglass asked us to consider the passage of time.
The lantern asks what we might discover if we use some of that time deliberately.
There is a meaningful difference between loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is an absence we experience. Solitude can be something we choose—a temporary distance from noise, expectation, and distraction that allows closer attention.
The Hermit embodies that second possibility.
His lantern does not illuminate the entire landscape. It provides only enough light to see what is immediately before him.
Perhaps that is part of the symbol's enduring appeal.
Wisdom rarely arrives as a sudden illumination of everything. More often, it is accumulated slowly: through experience, observation, mistakes, reflection, and the willingness to spend some time without an audience.
The Hermit has changed considerably since the old man with an hourglass appeared in Renaissance Italy. Yet something of that first figure remains.
Time still matters.
The old man still carries what experience has taught him.
Only now, instead of watching the sand disappear, he carries a light.
The Hermit -- Catalog No. 2110
Tarot Collection - Within Symbolism
Symbols Worth Wearing.