Arcana Library
Symbol Glossary
The recurring visual symbols across the 78 archetypes — what they mean and where they appear.
☀️ The Sun
Solar Light
Consciousness, clarity, vitality, masculine energy. The sun illuminates what is hidden and gives life to what it touches.
🌙 The Moon
Lunar Cycles
The subconscious, intuition, illusion, feminine cycles. The moon governs tides, dreams, and the hidden depths of the psyche.
💧 Water
Emotional Currents
Emotion, intuition, the unconscious mind, purification. Water flows, adapts, and always finds its level — as do our feelings.
🔥 Fire
Transformative Force
Passion, transformation, energy, inspiration. Fire destroys the old to make way for the new, and warms what it doesn't consume.
⛰️ Mountains
The Enduring
Obstacles, achievement, permanence, spiritual heights. Mountains represent both the challenges we must climb and the solid foundation beneath us.
🌹 Roses
Beauty & Truth
White roses: purity, clarity, spiritual truth. Red roses: passion, desire, earthly love. Roses always come with thorns — beauty alongside complexity.
🐍 Serpents
Hidden Wisdom
Transformation, hidden knowledge, kundalini energy, cycles of death and rebirth. The serpent sheds its skin — renewal through release.
⭐ Stars
Divine Guidance
Hope, inspiration, divine connection, navigational truth. Stars are fixed points of light in darkness — symbolic of higher principles we orient by.
🦁 The Lion
Courage & Instinct
Raw courage, primal instincts, Leo energy, the passions that must be tamed not suppressed. True strength works with instinct, not against it.
🗼 Towers
Constructed Realities
Ego-structures, belief systems, man-made constructs. When towers fall, it's always because they were built on unstable foundations — and something truer can emerge.
🔑 Keys
Access & Mystery
Access to hidden knowledge, opportunities that only open in specific conditions, the power to reveal what is concealed. Keys suggest there is always a way in.
🌱 Pomegranates
Abundance & Fertility
Fertility, feminine mystery, the unconscious mind, abundance. The pomegranate's many seeds represent the multiplicity of the unconscious and the fecundity of the earth.
⚡ Lightning
Divine Disruption
Sudden revelation, divine intervention, the collapse of false structures. Lightning doesn't destroy what is true — only what was built on illusion.
🦅 The Eagle
Higher Vision
Scorpio energy, transcendence, the power to see from great heights, transformation. The eagle soars above what others cannot see.
🌀 The Wheel
Cycles of Fortune
Karma, fate, the turning of cycles, what goes up must come down. The wheel reminds us that all circumstances are temporary — both suffering and joy.
🏛️ Pillars
Duality & Balance
The pillars B (Boaz) and J (Jachin) from the Temple of Solomon represent opposing forces held in creative tension — light/dark, active/passive, mercy/severity.
🌈 The Veil
What is Hidden
The thin boundary between the conscious and unconscious, the seen and unseen. Veils remind us that not all truth is visible to the waking eye.
🌿 Laurel Crown
Victory & Achievement
Mastery, accomplishment, recognition of effort. The laurel was awarded to victors — its presence signals genuine achievement earned through perseverance.