There are relics of the old tarot arcana still in popular awareness, thus being “behind the eight-ball” means you are unlucky. That is from the minor arcana. This is also why the eight ball is solid black. It’s directly linked to the suit of spades, or swords as it was traditionally.

Mythology is its own arcana. There are many traditions that don’t even take a literal interpretation of the Gods. An example in this case would be Buddhism, but instead the God forms serve as arcana to enable focusing on a specific principle of enlightenment, like embracing mortality.

Aren’t all the images of the arcana simply a way to focus the mind? Exactly, but things get hinky when they are taken out of context. You cannot use an arcana effectively if you try to repurpose it. It would be better to start anew.

We are speaking about a wider arcana, not confined to the tarot. Sort of archetypal thought forms, is that correct? Yes. We are speaking of the wider arcana. This is why the tarot works, or the hexagrams, or any of the forms that reflect and show up in reality. Runes would be another example, even Christian religious imagery. For some, it’s intensely transformative. But to use the tarot, the devil card was originally the god Seth, and that image was the herald of chaos. It didn’t have the moral associations it does today. Seth was as likely to be the fierce “”radical” champion as a conniving figure. Seth was the zealot.

Arcana forms mirror the astral plane? They do. In fact, even without any previous exposure, people will see the images of the tarot. Schizophrenics in the euphoric moments often see the “sun”, which is the universal symbol of inspiration. But the sun is both the inspirer of joy/enlightenment and madness, so the arcana run much more deeply than most people realize, and thus people swear that magick doesn’t work. As I said earlier, imperfect understanding leads to imperfect results. In the Common Era, e=mc2 has come to be an arcana, and has inspired all manner of foolishly incurred consequences based on relativistic ethics.

Arcana can get twisted to be false as well? The power is there no matter what, because it is what inspired the realization. But they can be taken incongruously, given a twisted mask, and thus Kwan Yin becomes the mother figure for the emperor of heaven and leads to the formation of a tyrannical totalitarian regime. They turn that goddess figure into the muse for a moral absolutism that would come to inspire the shootings in Tiananmen Square.

Hitler was heavily invested in the guidance of occultists. Occultists being students of arcana, and he had his power to do what he did through the application of them. The term occultist has nothing to do with the term cultist. The occult is the hidden, or the unseen forms or forces. In fact, a cultist is very immersed in the exoteric or outward forms of their creed.

In theology, all faiths are broken down into two parts, a creed or body of teachings, and a cult or body of practices. If you have any practices, and especially if you are an enthusiast of them, you are a cultist in the literal meaning of the word. My own practice roster is light, but that’s just personal temperament and habit, not a virtue in any universal sense.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~