Word: arcana
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...inordinate number of nuts. Geese and other birds are heading south as much as a month earlier than usual. To add to the forbidding configuration, the forward end of the woolly bear caterpillar is ominously darker this season. For legions of hunters, woodsmen and students of weather arcana, the evidence is plain-a harsh winter lies ahead. The omens, they warn, are all but unanimous: animal fur is thicker, the perch are running deeper, and the pine tree is unusually laden with seeds. Linwood Rideout of Bowdoinham, Me., a hunting guide for 40 years, gauges the se verity...
Pangs of Greed. This small novel leaves Muhlbach dangling between pleasure and despair. Packed with pre-Columbian arcana (Connell himself is a collector), it conveys the joyous release that absorption in a stern hobby can bring. Something alien has penetrated Muhlbach's life and opened vistas he can never exhaust. Not certain whether his response is to beauty or authenticity, Muhlbach nonetheless responds. Yet he is aware of some disquieting side effects: increasing pangs of greed for what he can appreciate but not afford, a habit of judging people by their acquisitions -and of being judged and found wanting...
...them?an elaborate and complicated casting of sticks (or in another variation, coins). Their random order of fall directs the inquirer to appropriate passages in the book, which then guide his actions. Tarot cards are another favorite. The standard tarot deck has 78 cards, 56 of the "minor arcana," similar to and forerunners of modern playing cards, and 22 "major arcana" cards depicting such mystical symbols as The Devil, The Fool, The Lovers and The Hanged Man, each of which has many interpretations. The tarots can be laid out in several ways to tell fortunes and interpret character; one method...
There he slowed down a bit, took more leisurely glances at the passing beauty ("feminine pulchritude," he called it), and talked of shared arcana. "You know," he said conspiratorally, with a Yugoslavian roll, "the only reason Walker got his interview was from kissing Kubrick's ass..." Thus dispensing with the first book of the series in which his own appears...
DiCara was the only pro on his team. The rest were enthusiastic amateurs, and even campaign manager Guenther had to be initiated into the arcana of Boston politics. But the volunteers had done well by him, and as the returns trickled in to demonstrate that he had not calculated wrong. DiCara became more and more pleased...