The Dark Arcana

Tarot arose in fifteenth-century Italy as a card game; the occult tradition made a map of consciousness of it. The correspondence of the twenty-two Major Arcana to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life was introduced by Éliphas Lévi in the 1850s, and the Golden Dawn and Crowley completed the system. On the bright path, each Arcanum is a principle, a step of ascent, an archetype of the possible. The Fool moves toward unity. The Magician embodies will. The World closes the cycle in fullness.

On the night side the same twenty-two principles pass through the Tunnels of Set and become other. These are not opposites and not reversals — they are the same archetypes after the light has turned away from them. Below — their dark correspondences. Click on a card, or draw one.