“Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” – Francis Bacon

Attributes: The Hermit sits, in his cave, on his stone pillar, within the dark forest, inside his locked room, and thinks. He contemplates the greater meanings to existence, to the cosmos, to humanity and God. Or maybe he just wonders to himself daily what is wrong with him, or the world, that he has isolated himself from it.

While the tradition of the Christian hermit, the anchorite, the solitary is what largely defines the archetype; the idea of a solitary man wandering off into the wilderness to understand something of the world is almost as old as time itself. However, the modern world with its emphasis on community and the undesirable nature of solitude, has done a great deal of damage to the positive aspects of the Hermit’s image. The Hermit has become another word for the recluse or shut-in, the misanthrope incapable of dealing with modern society. Whether this change in tone will have reprecussions on the statosphere remains to be seen.

Taboos: Isolation and seclusion from the community is what symbolizes the Hermit’s way of life. Acceptance into the community, either full or wary, weakens the Hermit’s connection to the archetype. Interestingly (and perhaps the remains of the anchorite’s communail hermitude), the avatar can be accepted by other followers of the archetype without violating taboo.

Masks: John the Baptist, St. Paul of Thebes, St. Anthony the Great (Christianity), Guatama Buddha (Buddhism)

Symbols: The cave, the poustinia, the desert pillar, or any place where a Hermit can be alone with his thoughts are symbolically linked to the archetype. The lack of maintenance to cleanliness or dress is also affiliated with the seclusion of the Hermit. With the creep of the modern era, misanthropy, reclusive behavior and run-down homes have become the new face of the Hermit.

Suspected Avatars In History: Diogenes the Cynic, Gautama Buddha, John the Baptist, St. Anthony the Great and the Desert Fathers of early Christianity. In his later years, Howard Hughes may have been channeling this archetype. Hikikomori, the recent spate of acute social withdrawal in Japan, might be the spiritual wake of movements in the Invisible Clergy involving the Hermit.

Channels:
1-50% – The role of the original hermits was to provide wisdom and knowledge gained in the deserts and rural wilderness to those who could not give themselves over to contemplation. As a result, they usually became very good at giving advice. On a successful Avatar: The Hermit check the Hermit can provide the best wisdom or advice he has to a petitioner who comes to him and asks.

51-70% – At this stage of development, the Hermit has attained peace comparable to a saint or Buddha. The isolation and solitude of the archetype no longer strikes so harshly at the heart and mind. All failed and hardened marks on the Hermit’s Isolation gauge are erased, and no further Isolation stress checks need be made. Effectively, the Hermit has one fewer gauge on the Madness Meter.

71-90% – At this stage, the world provides for the Hermit where the community cannot. At this point, you can use your Avatar: The Hermit skill in place of any of the following skills: Survival, Manual Labor, Work Without Rest or Food, or any other physical skill by which one can endure another day.

91%+ – The highest state as a Hermit is to seek the wisdom and understanding of the universe or his God. And while most figures in the occult underground cannot reliably choose to see in the statosphere, the Hermit can choose to let the statosphere in. This is not entirely healthy. The Clergy hammers especially hard on the mind of those who’d seek to see the movements of the cosmos.

With a successful Avatar: The Hermit check the Hermit can catch a brief glimpse of the movements of the statosphere at that moment. The Hermit does not have complete control over what he sees, of course. The GM has almost total control, and is advised to make the vision as surreal and over-the-top as he likes and make the player clearly aware that the vision, indeed, what the vision is about, is completely in the GM’s hands.