Arcane... secret, mysterious, obscure; known or knowable only to the initiate...

Throughout time there have always been secrets. I think part of it is simply being unsure and thus unwilling to broadcast a 'truth'. There is also of course the fear of ridicule or worse. It may be too that each individual isn't actually interested in sharing everything or even knowing EVERYthing. In fact, I don't think we CAN know everything, not from these bodies on this plane. Some of the information would make it impossible to function here. All information in one big chunk might just cause spontaneous combustion. You never know... and you probably don't really want to know. And besides that, what there is to know is always expanding.

Arcane Arts are often beyond science (or perhaps simply ahead of it), beyond logic, treading on the magical and fantastic, because they may defy what some would call reason. Alas, this seeming division has made it necessary in the past to keep a lot of secrets or risk losing one's head. Yet for some, what the Arts reveal makes much more sense than any grinding of reason could possibly supply.

I believe that most of the traditional arcane arts depend heavily on the practitioner's openess. I believe that most divination techniques simply help us to tap into what we could ask more directly if we knew how to get ourselves out of the way. So, the arcane arts are primarily tricks we play on ourselves to outwit our concrete, worldly conciousness in order to make contact with the subconscious or even unconscious mind, or our soul/higher selves, or the collective consciousness, etc.

I feel there is absolutely nothing inherently magical about tea leaves or tarot cards or rune stones or a scrying bowl. However, certain methods and devices have been carried forward, century after century, because they do work well. Not only do they take advantage of certain keys of symbolism to unlock our subconscious, but they keep each new generation from having to reinvent the wheel. It is easier to teach what is known than to discover anew. Even so, each practitioner surely brings their own uniqueness to any method or device and must learn to work with them on their own terms.

Not all arcane arts are suited to all people. As with anything else, there are affinities, there are harmonies or resonances. I may relate well to stones but find that tea leaves tell me absolutely nothing. That does not invalidate the reading of tea leaves, nor does it exalt the use of runes. I just need to find which Arts appeal to me and seem to give me more consistent results.