A Forgotten Hermitage
When Solitude Was Not Feared
There was a time when solitude was not feared but revered. To withdraw from society was not an illness to be cured but a calling to be honoured.
The hermit’s hut, the monk’s cell, the anchoress’s anchorhold—all were places of deliberate stillness, sanctuaries built for one.
Across cultures, the hermitage took many forms. In early Christianity, the Desert Fathers and Mothers fled the cities of late Rome to live in the wilderness. Their solitude was not despair but protest—a refusal of corruption and noise.
They believed that silence revealed what the crowd concealed.
In medieval Europe, the anchorite was literally “anchored” to a wall of a church, walled into a small cell with a single window facing the altar. From there, she might pray, listen, and advise those who sought counsel. Her life was not isolation but intensity—total immersion in the act of being alone with God.
Ornamental hermitages
Far to the east, Buddhist forest monks retreated to mountains and groves, not to escape the world but to dissolve the illusion of separation from it.
Their solitude was a laboratory for awareness, not a denial of humanity but its refinement.
Even the secular world once understood the value of the solitary figure. In eighteenth-century England, it became fashionable for aristocrats to build ornamental hermitages on their estates and hire resident hermits to inhabit them.
These “garden hermits” were to live quietly, read, and occasionally appear during dinner parties—living emblems of contemplation. It was considered tasteful to keep a man devoted to thought.
An unconventional eccentric
Now, such a figure would be seen as eccentric at best, suspicious at worst. A man who wishes to live alone must justify himself. He must speak of burnout, trauma, or recovery. He must promise to return “better” for his time away. Solitude without purpose is treated as waste.
We have forgotten that solitude is itself a form of knowledge. To be alone is to hold up a mirror that reflects not the face but the field—the whole presence of what is.
The hermitage was once an architectural expression of that truth: a place designed not for comfort but for encounter. It was a threshold, not a wall. Within its silence, the self could expand to meet the world on equal terms.
What we call loneliness
What we call “loneliness” today may be nothing more than the unpractised art of hermitage—the fear of meeting oneself without distraction.
We speak of connection as salvation, but the hermit teaches another form of connection: awareness without audience.
Every man carries a hermitage within him, a quiet chamber where thought can rest and feeling can unfold. To rediscover that inner room is not to retreat from life but to return to it unguarded, without the armour of noise.
The practice of peace begins there—in the remembered wisdom of the hermit’s hut, in the willingness to be apart not as rejection but as recognition.
The Modern Hermit
The hermit no longer needs a hut.
He lives quietly among others, walking streets instead of cloisters, his silence internal, his discipline invisible. He owns a phone but leaves it unanswered. He attends without joining. He does not reject the world—he simply refuses to be consumed by it.
Modern hermitage is not about isolation but orientation. It is the decision to face inward while remaining in view. The man who practises peace does not disappear; he becomes transparent—seen, yet untroubled by seeing.
In this sense, the modern hermit is every man who reclaims his own rhythm. Who chooses a walk over a feed, a conversation over a post, an afternoon of quiet over a day of performance. He does not need permission to withdraw; he grants it to himself.
Peace is not elsewhere. It is simply what remains when nothing demands to be managed.
