“The Greek word erēmia is in turn rooted in erēmos, meaning desolate. While a certain bleak emptiness can accompany unsought solitude, there is solace to be found even so. As Chesterton observed in that same essay of his: “It is in society that men quarrel with their friends; it is in solitude that they forgive them.” The word itself dates back to the 12th Century, and comes from the Greek word erēmia, meaning desert, a big clue to its religious roots. Paul of Thebes is widely regarded as the first hermit, fleeing anti-Christian persecution and a scheming relative to exist alone in the Egyptian desert from the age of 13 to his death in the year 314, aged 113.
“Look to other cultures, and you’ll find that even early Buddhism’s chaste female wanderers, for example, were exceptions to the rule. Like the Hermit card in Tarot decks, we picture them male. In literature, the woman who opts for isolation tends to be at best a figure of pity, at worst, something more malevolent.
“Finally, one of history’s rarer female hermit voices, the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich – who lived through the Black Death as a child and survived serious illness in adulthood – provides words to which we all, believers, agnostics and atheists alike, might cling: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.””
source: article by Hephzibah Anderson, BBC
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200417-what-hermits-can-teach-us-about-isolation
