The Hermits of the Wissahickon

In 1694 a German mystic named Johannes Kelpius led forty scholars into the Wissahickon woods to await the end of the world, living as the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness: they watched the sky through a telescope, practiced alchemy and healing, and waited for a sign that never came. Kelpius, the Hermit of the Ridge, is said to have thrown a casket of secret arcana into the creek before he died. A stone grotto called Kelpius’s Cave still sits above Hermit Lane in Fairmount Park.