How to Pray The Arcanum: A Devotional Meditation

This is a magical sequence of prayers and a living current of wisdom.

Praying The Arcanum is powerful magic.

In the short term, it will bring you peace, enhance your outlook, and improve the quality of your day. And when you pray it regularly, over time, it will open you up to a limitless current of wisdom, which will pulsate and flow ever more deeply within and around you. It will bestow resilience, boost your luck, improve your relationships, supercharge your intuition, and vastly expand your capacity for joy. What’s more, it will bring blessings and healing to the world.

Why? Because praying The Arcanum aligns you with Spirit and fortifies the universal DNA within your psyche. In other words, it taps you right into the highest wisdom and the purest expression of spiritual light.

I received this series of prayers and mysteries directly from the Divine, and I am delighted to share it here with you. (Those of you who remember my Pagan Rosary will recognize the prayers. The Arcanum is the evolution of that practice.)

While this sequence of prayers and mysteries is simple, you will need to put in a bit of attention and energy to get the gist, and some sustained commitment to get into the swing of things. But at the same time, these instructions are detailed enough for you to get started right away. Bookmark them, print them out, or copy them into a notebook or book of shadows so you can use them for your daily spiritual work.

The Arcanum is prayed with beads, much like the Catholic Rosary. It’s a daily ritual that can be performed by anyone, of any belief system or lack thereof. Still, the structure is the same as the Rosary, so you can start with any standard rosary beads, or make your own with a similar structure. (Cross not required.)

Arcanum means mystery. Spiritually speaking, a mystery is a truth that can be felt and experienced but not encapsulated in words or understood in a literal sense.

Tarot readers know that the word arcana is used to describe the two major groupings in the deck: as in the major and minor arcana – the first 22 and the remaining 56 respectively. Arcana is the plural of arcanum. Many mysteries are arcana. One mystery is an arcanum.

Within the macrocosmic mystery of the Arcanum prayer, there are twenty microcosmic mysteries: four sets of five. The mysteries follow the same sequence as the 22 major arcana in the Tarot, with two of the mysteries incorporating two cards rather than one. (This may sound a little confusing but there’s no need to understand it at this point – it will become clear shortly.)

The mysteries are The Primordial Mysteries (The Fool through The Hierophant), The Engagement Mysteries (The Lovers through The Wheel of Fortune), The Existential Mysteries (Justice through The Tower), and The Celestial Mysteries (The Star through The World).

The Mysteries are prayed in that order; one set of five mysteries per day. So, you will start with The Primordial Mysteries on the first day, then do The Engagement Mysteries the next day, and so on. Once you complete all four, you start again at the beginning with The Primordial Mysteries. It doesn’t matter what day of the week you start on, just show up the next day and pray the next set of mysteries in the sequence. If you skip a day here or there, simply pick up where you left off.

While the mysteries rotate every day, the prayers with which they are interspersed stay the same.

Below the diagram, you’ll find the daily prayers. Feel free to change any of the words to suit your preferences and beliefs.

Then read on for the mysteries and more instruction on how to pray The Arcanum.

 

The Arcanum Prayers

 

Invocation (Place your hand on your heart)

In the heart of the Goddess,
And of the God,
And of the Great Holy Mystery,
Blessed be.

The Declaration

I believe in the Great Goddess,
The Great God,
And the Great Holy Mystery,
Also called All That Is,
Which both issues from and give birth to its primordial parents
In a beginning-less, endless cycle of creation.
I believe in the One Consciousness,
The golden light of healing,
The archangels,
The power of love,
The wisdom of the ancestors,
The value of gratitude,
The responsibility to serve,
And my own inherent spiritual power.
Blessed be. 

The Great Prayer

Great Goddess,
Great God,
Great Holy Mystery,
All That Is,
I call on you.
Your consciousness is my consciousness.
Your will is my will.
Divinity is within me and I am divine.
Thank you for granting me all that I need today to thrive.
Thank you for aligning me with spirit and illuminating my path.
Thank you for opening my heart so that I may love others fully and for opening my eyes so I may see them as divine.
Thank you for holding me in the protective light of peace.
So mote it be.

Road Opener

Divine Presence and sacred light, I invoke you.
Guide my way today and shine your radiance on the path ahead.
Open every door and clear every channel,
So that I may move forward with ease and laughter,
and with great joy in my heart.
For my highest and truest good,
And the highest and truest good of all,
Thank you.

Memento Mori

Divine Consciousness, help to me remember both my true eternal nature and the fleeting nature of human life.
Blessed be.

Closing Prayer

By earth and air,
By fire and water,
And by spirit,
My prayers are chanted and my magic is cast.
Thank you, God and Goddess,
Sun and moon,
Earth and limitless stars.
Thank you for blessing this day and for anchoring me in your love.
Thank you for awakening me to the miracles that surround me always and thank you for alerting me to the miracles that are mine to perform.
As I live today, may I live fully,
And if I de today, may it be a good death, after a life well lived.
Blessed be.

How to Pray The Arcanum

With each prayer leading up to the first mystery, relax your body, breathe gently, and contemplate the words, addressing them to Spirit and allowing them to lift your consciousness to the transcendent realm.

Before and after you read the first mystery, gaze at the image or images that go with it. You can gaze at the images as they appear here or use the images from a Tarot deck of your choosing.

When you say each mystery aloud, start by announcing it. For example, for the first mystery, you will say: “The first Primordial Mystery: The Fool.” Then you will say the remaining words of the mystery aloud.

As you can see in the diagram above, after announcing and speaking a mystery, you will say one Great Prayer and ten Road Openers. As you pray those prayers, contemplate the mystery you have just spoken, inwardly picturing or gazing at the accompanying image as desired. Once you get to The Invocation and The Memento Mori, bring your awareness back to your words and speak directly to Spirit once again. Repeat this pattern with the remaining mysteries. For the Closing Prayer, pay attention once more to your words, putting meaning and feeling behind them as best you can.

Don’t worry about doing this perfectly. Some days it will be easier to concentrate than others. Just show up and do your best again and again. We call it a practice for a reason.

Also note that The Arcanum can be employed as a ritual for any purpose – for example if you want to bless something, manifest something, heal something, or get stuck energy moving. Simply set your intention before you begin, and gently keep it in your awareness as you pray. You can do this for one cycle of the Arcanum (one day of prayer), all four (four days of prayer), or four sets of four (sixteen days of prayer). Follow your intuition for the duration that feels appropriate to your intention.

The Mysteries of the Arcanum

All artwork by Pamela Colman Smith

The Primordial Mysteries

The First Primordial Mystery: The Fool

The Fool begins his journey.
He is everything – all of existence at once.
The ether, all the elements, all the planets, and all the stars.
Pure potentiality setting off into the void,
Free and carefree,
Lucky because his heart is wide open,
Unprepared and yet ready for whatever may arise.

The Second Primordial Mystery: The Magician

The Magician channels infinite power.
He works with the elements to consecrate his intentions
And manifest whatever he may choose.
He is bold, swift, and electric, always ready to be and to do.
He acts as a lightning rod at the center of his circle, which is also the center of the earth, and the universe, and all that is. 

The Third Primordial Mystery: The High Priestess

The High Priestess listens to silence.
In the vastness of space,
She finds a calm neutrality beyond right and wrong.
She revels in aloneness.
She is unafraid of the endless depths.
In wordlessness, she knows the eternal truths.
Like darkness, she sits quietly amidst the stars. 

The Fourth Primordial Mystery: The Empress and Emperor

The Empress is verdant life,
Joy and goodwill spreading like sunlight,
Making the fields flourish and the people prosper,
Prolific abundance in bloom.

The Emperor establishes order.
He builds roads and makes laws
So that his subjects may be happy and safe,
And amicably share the bounty of the land.

Each respecting the other’s authority, the Empress and Emperor rule well.

The Fifth Primordial Mystery – The Hierophant

The Hierophant has learned some of the cosmic workings.
He recognizes subtleties that take time to perceive.
He has discovered how to listen to the music of the spheres.
His spiritual practice has taken shape
The mysteries have begun to reveal themselves to him.
He is on the path of mastery.
He gathers wisdom that he can teach and transmit. 

The Engagement Mysteries

The First Engagement Mystery: The Lovers

Life draws each lover in.
Life engages the lover in life.
Driven by irresistible attraction, the lover must make a choice.
If it is not one path, it will be another, and even no choice is a choice, so a choice must be made.
A choice made is a path which opens, with twists and turns which cannot yet be seen, some of which lead to pleasure, some of which lead to pain, all of which help us evolve.

The Second Engagement Mystery: The Chariot

The Chariot driver summons his will.
He focuses on a destination.
He rallies the active and receptive principles and steers them in the direction of his aim.
He is making his way, which is a way no one else has traveled.
It feels as if he is conjuring his future out of nothing,
Seeing a possibility that nobody else sees.
Yet his determination is strong, so the universe eventually conspires to assist him.

The Third Engagement Mystery: Strength

The strong one is at ease with herself and her strength.
The lion is her ally,
And she has nothing to fear.
She has learned the art of serene confidence.
Although she possesses the power of the sun, she radiates like a mild summer day – pleasant, invigorating, and bright.

The Fourth Engagement Mystery: The Hermit

The Hermit has climbed a mountain and resides at the top alone.
Looking down from above, his perspective is wide.
He contemplates his present, his future, and his past.
He shines a light into the darkness and illuminates the fog, finally seeing what he previously could not.
With no one to talk to, he remembers that his consciousness is one with silence and space.
He naturally brings order to his inner and outer worlds.

The Fifth Engagement Mystery: Wheel of Fortune

When we are born, we are swirled into the cycle.
Life pulls us in, and we do our best to figure it out.
It feels as if we have a destiny, but it is unclear.
Perhaps what happens is just randomness, or chaos, or chance.
And yet we know we have some agency.
Even though we can’t change everything, what we do has an effect, even if we don’t understand its scope.
So, we ask for wisdom, and eventually we gain it.
Then we learn to open the channel to our fortune, clearing the way for windfalls and miracles – chance occurrences that feel preordained, problems that turn out to be lucky breaks, coincidences in harmony with the music of the spheres.

The Existential Mysteries

The First Existential Mystery: Justice

Justice seeks what is right and correct.
She studies the precedents and desires to see all perspectives.
She balances compassion with reason to establish fairness.
She knows she is not perfect, but she seeks perfection anyway, working with what she knows and what she can ascertain.
In human affairs, she does her best to approximate divine equilibrium.

The Second Existential Mystery: The Hanged One

The Hanged One is in stasis: neither active nor upright.
He cannot move forward or backward and can only view things from upside down.
At first he seems to be in a state of punishment, and yet his aura is radiant, and he appears to be at rest,
For he understands the wordless magic of this liminal time.
He knows that in surrender to the in-between, the state of enforced waiting and non-movement, blessings will arise.
What is not working will fall away
New perspectives will be born,
And he will emerge from his suspension – freed, upright, and renewed.

The Third Existential Mystery: Death

Death rides, relaxed and victorious, through the battlefield, methodically conquering all:
Some today, some tomorrow, all very soon.
I may not escape this certainty, but I may choose how I respond to it.
I may rush toward Death, I may desperately deny and distract myself from Death,
Or, if I am wise, I may find the freedom in Death’s inevitable triumph.
I may notice that even in my singular life, nothing lasts forever.
Old conditions die as new ones are born.
I see the flashing beauty in the fleeting and offer flowers at the altar of its passing.
So that Death may teach me to live.

The Fourth Existential Mystery: Temperance

Temperance is the angel I summon in my daily spiritual work.
Through meditation, contemplation, and prayer, divine light shines.
Temperance teaches me non-judgement, self-compassion, and empathy.
Temperance guides me in being kind to my body, nourishing my spirit, and taking care of my mind.
Temperance helps me transmute suffering into beauty, heartbreak into wisdom, and challenges into strengths.
Like the cool promise of a sunrise,
Gently, lovingly, quietly, I discover peace.

The Fifth Existential Mystery: The Devil and The Tower

The Devil is the ego, unchecked: over-attachment to the illusion of the separate self.
No matter how enlightened I may believe I have become, the Devil still appears.
Sometimes he whispers of my greatness: my superiority and entitlement.
Sometimes he convinces me I am inferior: that there is something fundamentally wrong with me or that I am undeserving of good.
Still other times he implies that without certain belongings or distinctions, I will be nothing, or I will be worth nothing, or I will surely disappear.

The Tower is the toppling of forms, and the chaos that ensues.
In every life, conditions crumble.
People die.
Relationships break apart.
Circumstances end and are rocked by shocking change.

In learning to see through the Devil’s illusions, I will be more resilient when the Tower falls.
And sometimes the Tower falling will help me see where the Devil has deceived me, and to gently replace that deception with the truth.

The Celestial Mysteries

 The First Celestial Mystery: The Star

After a dark midnight, The Star anoints the sky with her liquid light, restoring hope.
Bathed in this balm of celestial radiance, I remember joy.
My strength recharges and my clarity returns.
As I receive healing energy from the Cosmos, I offer it back with love.
It is a cyclical and symbiotic flow.
So, no matter how much I have suffered or what I have endured, my spirit may renew.

The Second Celestial Mystery: The Moon

The Moon is secretive. Half of her is in light, the other in shadow.
And even the light half waxes and wanes.
She is a dream that shows accuracies, but also illusions.
She is the wildness in my spirit that I can sense but not comprehend.
When I confuse fantasy or horror with reality, she is there.
And yet, without her, I may not sense the transcendent or the vast.
I am learning to discern between her trickeries and her truths.
I am learning to perceive what she reveals and hints at, even when I don’t consciously understand.

The Third Celestial Mystery: The Sun

The Sun bathes our world in diamond light, bestowing joy.
Our life was born from The Sun.
Our hearts mirror its function.
We are nourished by its bounty.
Our eyes evolved to see the colors into which its light refracts.
Every day, the sun rises, reminding us to acknowledge our blessings, little and big.
And just as sunlight generates energy and growth, gratitude begets gratitude, success produces success, and celebration calls in even more to celebrate.

The Fourth Celestial Mystery: Judgement

Judgement is the angel of fate, destiny, karma, and the Akashic records.
The sky opens and this angel appears to announce a new order,
Perhaps through a unique occurrence, a seeming inconvenience, an obvious message, a repetitive pattern, or an inner nudge.
When I am conscious and courageous, I perceive this announcement and let it transform me.
My old way of living falls away and I awake to a new one, as if I have died and been reborn.

The Fifth Celestial Mystery: The World

When a cycle completes, I return to the beginning, the same and yet so much different than before.
I have seen the world, and now I contain the world.
My perspective is nuanced.
My eloquence is effortless.
I am subtle and masterful in my approach.
And while I may rest here for a moment to enjoy what I’ve learned and give thanks for how far I’ve come,
My hard-earned wisdom counsels me, soon, to set out again,
On another quest, another exploration, another cycle of time.

I’m curious how you like praying The Arcanum and I’d love to answer any questions you have about it.

Also, please come back and let me know happens when you pray The Arcanum. It’s incredibly magical! So I know you will have some interesting experiences to share.

A final note: The Arcanum is deeply sacred and divinely inspired, and just as I received it as a gift from the Universe, I felt compelled to offer it as a gift to the world. This is why I wanted to share it without the distraction of ads interspersed. So permit me to mention a few things before you go.

My first Tarot deck comes out soon. It’s gorgeous and magical. You can check it out and pre-order it here.

No matter where you are in the world, I would love to work with you. Learn about my Akashic clearing sessions here and my Tarot sessions here.

My membership program, Wisdom Circle, is still open for enrollment for a limited time. You can give it a try for free. Learn more here.