Waite begins his description of the card in "The Pictorial Key
to the Tarot"(p. 104) on the same point that ends it. Conventional
renderings show the Hermit's cloak partially obscuring the lantern he
holds to signify the hidden quality of "the Silent and Unknown
Philosophy" (PKT p. 107), while his does not. His point is that "the
Divine Mysteries secure their own protection". Waite believed that
most people simply aren't equipped to understand the message of the
Higher Magia, Mystical Union. Those who are "highly called and
strangely chosen" are seperate from "the great multitude", not because
the Secret Doctrine is in "intentional concealment", but because the
multitude lacks the touch from God, the insight, necessary to see
value in the Higher Magia. Even in full display, only the elect can
apprehend the light cast by the lantern.
	Writing in "The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry" (p. 72) about
the restrictions of pledges, he further illustrates this inherent
hiddenness:
	"Remembering, on the one hand, certain conventional Pledges,
which protect the cortices and minima of the Masonic Mystery, it is of
all things needful, on the other, that I shall not fail in
explicitness over the deep things concerning which there are no
Pledges, yet realising at the same time that messages from the great
heights are intelligible only to those prepared in heart, while it is
idle to attempt evasions with such as have ears to hear."
	The passage is footnoted:
	"This is how the Maxima Dei et Mysteria do ever	protect
themselves, at once against loss and profanation."
	In Waite's "Lamps of Western Mysticism" (pp. 264-5), a section
entitled "The Inner Doctine of the Path" is composed of 22 tenets-
they are Tarot meditations (the whole list can be found at 
http://adepti.com -misc. writings, A Tarot thumbnail). The numeration
of these tenets begins at one, so assuming 0=1, as the Fool(0) is the
first in Waite's numeric progression, the Hermit(9) falls to tenet
number 10:
	"(10) The reflection of God therein is in virtue of some
high-uplifted summit of our nature, a Mountain of the Lord on which
the Lord abides: were it otherwise, we could not conceive of the
union. It follows that the Path of Contemplation may be described as
the Path of Ascent into our higher being, and this is an ascent in
love, for it is only in the tongue of symbolism that we can speak as
if spatial distance intervened between the states."
	Here he says that the highest point of our human nature- a
Mountain of the Lord, the emminence of the card- is where the Lord
abides and where we find mystical union. The way to union is love, and
we refer to it's attainment symbolically as travelling a path.
	Waite seems unclear about this level of attainment. In "New
Encyclopedia of Freemasonry" (I:409) he implies that the Hermit
stands on the highest possible point of ascent:
	"On the hypothesis that the sephirotic scheme- with which
I have dealt briefly elsewhere- is a tree and not a ladder it is
certainly in the proper understanding of an ascent from earth to
heaven, consisting apparently of ten degrees or stages, but in
reality of seven, as the three at the summit are Divine Hypostases,
the Sacred Trinity of Kabalism: the ascent is therefore to Chesed
and not higher."
	But then in "Holy Kabbalah" (p. 601) he writes of a state or
states exceeding "Chesed and not higher":
	"If it be said that these things were conceived only in
the mind by Sons of the Doctrine.... However this may be, that
which confronts us in Kabbalistic Theosophia Magna is a
modality of soul in attainment which is second to none in the
whole of mystical testimony, and par contra it exceeds all. It
is the state beyond the summit of the Mount of God, an ascension
into the great silence beyond all modes and forms."
	Combining both the symbolism of the mountain and the lantern,
again in "Lamps of Western Mysticism" (p. 21, 22), Waite, in a
discussion of the poet, Spenser, provides additional insight into the
symbol:
	"There remains a further question to open the heart of this
subject, and if in the last resource it must be answered by each for
himself, there is a response in the high places which is catholic and
obtains for all who go up the Mountain of the Lord. What is this fire
within which we are called upon to guard by the poet? What is that
light which the earlier and higher counsel bids us lift up- as if from
within ourselves- in order that it may shine before men?"
	Here is the image of the quester on the mountaintop, holding
aloft the light generated by "the fire within". Waite continues:
	"They may answer well enough in the lower ranges to the light
of conduct, the torch of good example and the "virtual thought" of
Spenser, all that which in an ordinary sense might be counted by St.
Paul to "the praise of them that do well," for there is an ethical
and social standard which is presupposed at the foot of the Mountain
in those who would ascend to the summit. And this is well, God knows,
for the many who abide on the spiritual plains, by their pleasant
streams or in quiet glades or glens."
	There is a lower sense in which that lantern, that light, is
the "torch of good example". But that is for the great multitude, the
dwellers of the spiritual plains, not those who ascend spiritual
mountains. In fact, this lower light is merely a prerequisite to the
ascent. Waite continues:
	"But the state of virtuous thought which testifies concerning
itself in its own silence unawares, and which carries its own
warrents, led up for Spenser to something which he affirms indeed, but
does not attempt to expound. He calls it "glorious and great intent"
which brings forth an "eternal brood," as if a light shining in very
truth before the face of the whole world. Who shall say what it
signified to him, the immortal poet in his rapture? But that which it
means to the mystics, wheresoever dispersed through the paths of the
great religions, is and can be one thing only. It is the glory of the
Inward Presence, and this also is the light which, although it is
meant to shine before men and can in no ways help shining when it
dwells in the heart of man, is of no human kindling."
	He admits that he can only speculate as to Spenser's meaning,
but he can state explicitly what it means to him- the glory of the
Inward Presence. Those who are in real attainment, who have united
themselves to the Inward Presence, cannot help but exhibit this
attainment, made possible only as a gift from God. Waite continues:
	"It is sought, it is found within, but it is there and is not
made. It is brought forth, however, in the leading of mystical life,
as if a certain lamp of the Sanctuary were carried to the Western door
and displayed on the Church steps in the darkness, or the Sacred Host
in the monstrance above the tabernacle were borne through the streets
in procession, the Supreme Mystery of Faith displayed before the eyes
of all for recognition and worship in the world. I testify that the
light of the Presence, raised up by realisation in the soul from a
state of immanence to the state of manifestation, is the only light of
the world; that the inward maintainence of the Presence is the
guarding of the fire within; and that when it shines before men- I
have said that it cannot help shining- all those who have eyes to see
will glorify the Father Who is in Heaven."
	The Inward Presence is the form of the immanence of God in the
World. When the quester brings his life into union with that presence,
the immanence of God in the World becomes the manifestation of God in
the World and the light shines on the mountaintop.
	In "The Ceremony of Advancement in the 1=10 Grade of Zelator",
subtitled "Newly Constructed from the Cipher Manuscripts and Issued by
the Authority of the Concealed Superiors of the Second Order, to
Members of Recognized Temples", a ritual written by Waite and
privately published in 1910 for use by the Independent and Rectified
Rite of the GD:
	"The Hegemon takes the Zelator to the North.
Hegemon: <I>The Table of Shewbread stood on the Northern side of the
Holy Place, and the Twelve Loaves placed thereon were emblematic of
the Bread of Life. Some part of its secret meaning is shown in the
diagram before you. The 12 external circles represent the mystic
loaves, and the Lamp in the centre is the grace and life and light by
which the material nourishment of man may be changed into the food of
souls: it is the power behind the Sacraments."
        This symbol traces its heritage to the GD Cypher Manuscript,
generally ascribed to Kenneth MacKenzie. Similar to the Universe or
World card, the central figure is a lamp.
        In Waite's mystical view, union with God communicated a divine
sustanence to the soul. One of his favorite symbols for this mystical
fact is the way the presence of the Holy Grail made it possible for
Joseph of Arimethaea and other members of the Grail Parties to go
without food and water for many years and why at several of the Grail
Feasts, those sitting at the King's Table never actually consume
anything yet wax lyrical over the quality and depth of their
refreshment at the feast. It is this divine communication that gives
the Sacraments of the Church their real power and it is a property
symbolized by the lamp.
	After an explaination of the 12 circles, the ceremony
continues, "Within the 12 circles are 4 interior circles, containing
the Kerubic emblems- the Lion, the Man, the Bull and the Eagle, which
are in correspondence with the 4 parts of our natural personality. In
this sense the Lamp, standing on the Pentagram, represents their
transmutation and quintessence. You should understand in conclusion
that, the explanation of every thing being within and not without us,
the Rose of Creation [the diagram, ed.] is also the Rose of our
humanity, and the Lamp in the centre of the diagram is the higher
consciousness. Man is thus the explanation of every thing, and the key
to this mystery is that God is within."
        Even in this context, the lamp represents "the Glory of the
Inward Presence", sustaining and transmuting him in all his parts,
from within.
	Waite closes his discussion of the lantern in the PKT saying
it intimates that "where I am, you also may be". Anyone can ascend the
mountain.

	The dark sky in the card could be taken for Ain Soph, but this is
my own speculation. From "The Holy Kabbalah", (p. 20):
	"As to its nature we know enough to be certain that the night
thereof is not of a festival below but of the eternal oneness in that
Divine Darkness which is called otherwise in the records AIN-SOPH
AOUR, the limitless and undifferentiated light."
	Again from the HK (p. 601-602), the darkness is the goal:
	"After the rapture of Metrona, that great angel of the
Presence, vibrating on the threshold of Godhood; after Kether, where
Jehovah is united with Elohim; after Mysterium Shekinah, presiding
over Sacred Births and Divine Marriages, there is set before us the
last estate of man and the last word concerning it, Ain Soph, that
which is conceived in the mind and realised from far away in the heart
respecting unknowable darkness at the centrum concentratum of light
unknown."