The lantern
The Hermit holds up a lantern with a six-pointed star inside. In Waite’s words, the light says "where I am, you also may be."
In the tradition
The earliest Italian cards showed the Hermit as an old man with an hourglass, a figure of Time, and later decks gave him a lamp instead.
Waite reads him as someone who has reached a height, not someone still searching, and the light is held up so that others can follow. The star inside is the six-pointed Seal of Solomon, a sign much used by the occult societies Waite belonged to.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
Updated October 9, 2026.
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