Chapter 9: Hermit
The Hermit, in the guise of the religious contemplative, appears in all three sections of the Commedia. Dante's treatment is evenhanded, placing the corrupt in hell (e.g., Inferno 22:81) and the repentant in purgatory (Purgatorio 18:118). In heaven, the faithful contemplatives occupy the sphere of Saturn, the seventh heaven, with St. Benedict as their spokesperson. The identification of the Hermit image with Saturn seems to fit the Tarot symbol since Saturn is often depicted as Old Man Time (Panofsky 1939). Another interpretation sees the Hermit as guide. It is interesting in this context to see that illustrators occasionally represented Dante's guide, Virgil, as a similar image (Figure 21, 1425-1450).
Wheel
The Wheel of Fortune appears in its traditional form in the Inferno 7:62-97. She is the one who shifts the fortunes of men, allowing first one group to rule and then overthrowing them and allowing another group to take over. She turns the sphere of events in blissful disregard. An illustration for this section of the Inferno is shown in Figure 22 and leaves little doubt about the similarity of Dante's imagery to the Tarot card.
Fortune is also mentioned in the Purgatory 19:3-5. Here the name "Fortuna major" is given to a group of stars that rise just before dawn. According to the poem, geomancers of the east believed that dreams
that occurred while these stars were above the horizon were likely to come true. So there is some connection with the concept of fortune, but the stars bear little resemblance to the Tarot image.
