Excerpt from Meditation on the

Ninth Major Arcanum of the Tarot

THE HERMIT

______________

L’HERMITE

Isis: "Give heed, my son Horus; for you shall

hear the secret doctrine, of which our

forefather Kamephis was the first teacher.

It so befell that Hermes heard this teaching from

Kamephis, the eldest of all our race;

I heard it from Hermes,

the writer of the records,

when he initiated me

in the rite of Black (Perfection).

(opot' eme kai tw teleiw melani etimëse,

Words of Isis from the sacred book

of Hermes Trismegistus entitled Kore Kosmu).

For Trismegistus who, I do not know how,

has completed the discovery of virtually the

entire truth, has often described the power

and the majesty of the Word, as illustrated by

the foregoing quotation, where he (Hermes)

proclaims the existence of an ineffable and

holy Word, whose pronunciation is beyond

the power of man

(quo fatetur esse ineffabilem quendem

sanctumque SERMONEM, cuius enarratio

modum hominis excedet,

Lactantius, Divinae institutiones iv, 9,3)

For the gate is narrow and the way is hard,

that leads to life,

and those who find it are few,

(Matthew vii, 14)

Dear Unknown Friend,

The Hermit! I am pleased to have arrived, in the series of these Letter Meditations, at this venerable and mysterious figure of a solitary itinerant dressed in a red robe under a blue mantle, holding in his right hand a lantern — alternately yellow and red — and leaning on a staff. For it is the venerable and mysterious Hermit who was master of the most intimate and most cherished dreams of my youth, as moreover he is the master of dreams for all youth in every country, who are enamoured by the call to seek the narrow gate and the hard way to the Divine, Name for me a country or a time for which the youth — who are truly "young", i.e. living for the Ideal — has not had its imagination haunted by the figure of a wise and good father, a spiritual father, a hermit, who has passed through the narrow gate and who walks the hard way— someone whom one could trust without reserve and whom one could venerate and love without limit. Which young Russian man, for example, would not have undertaken a journey, no matter how long and of what duration, in order to meet a staretz, i.e. a wise and good father, a spiritual father, a hermit? Which young Jewish man from Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine or Romania would not have done as much to meet a Hassidic tsadik, i.e. a wise and good father, a spiritual father, a hermit? Which young man in India would refuse to make every possible effort to find and meet a chela of guru, i.e. a wise and good father, a spiritual father, a hermit?

And was it otherwise with the youth around Origen, Clement of Alexandria, St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola? Was it otherwise, also, with the pagan youth of Athens around Socrates and Plato?

It was the same in ancient Persia around Zarathustra, Ostanes and other representatives of the spiritual dynasty of the mages that was founded by the great Zarathustra. It was also so in Israel with the schools of the prophets, and with the Nazorenes and Essenes. It was the same in ancient Egypt, where the figure of the founder of the dynasty of "wise and good fathers" that of Hermes Trismegistus — became, not only for Egypt but also for the entire Graeco-Roman world, the prototype of the wise and good father, the hermit!

Eliphas Lévi certainly sensed the universal historical meaning of the Hermit, This is why he stated the admirable formula:

The initiate is he who possesses the lamp of Trismegistus, the mantle of Apollonius, and the staff of the patriarchs. (Eliphas Lévi, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie; trsl. A.E. Waite, Transcendental Magic. Its Doctrine and Ritual, London, 1968, p. 92)

In fact, the Hermit who haunts the imagination of "young" youth, the Hermit of legend and the Hermit of history was, is, and always will be the solitary man with the lamp, mantle and staff For he possesses the gift of letting light shine in the darkness — this is his "lamp"; he has the faculty of separating himself from the collective moods, prejudices and desires of race, nation, class and family the faculty of reducing to silence the cacophony of collectivism vociferating around him, in order to listen to and understand the hierarchical harmony of the spheres — this is his "mantle"; at the same time he possesses a sense of realism which is so developed that he stands in the domain of reality not on two feet, but rather on three, i.e. he advances only after having touched the ground through immediate experience and at first-hand contact without intermediaries — this is his "staff". He creates light, he creates silence and he creates certainty — conforming to the criterion of the Emerald Table, namely the triple concordance of that which is clear, of that which is in harmony with the totality of revealed truths and of that which is the object of immediate experience:

Verum, sine mendacio, certum et verissimum (Tabula Smaradina, 1).

Verum, sine mendacio — this is clarity (the lamp);

Certum — this is the concordance of that which is clear and the totality of other truths (the "lamp" and the "mantle");

Verissimum — this is the concordance of that which is clear, the totality of other truths, and authentic and immediate experience (the "lamp", the "mantle" and the "staff').

The Hermit therefore represents not only a wise and good father who is a reflection of the Father in heaven, but also the method and essence of Hermeticism. For Hermeticism is founded on the concordance of three methods of knowledge: the a priori knowledge of intelligence (the "lamp"); the harmony of all by analogy (the "mantle"); and authentic 'immediate experience (the "staff').

Hermeticism is thus a threefold synthesis of three antinomies:

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