Man, I was having one of those weeks. Everything felt upside down. I was scrolling through the internet, you know, just killing time, feeling completely useless, when I stumbled across this weird mention of an “arcana number.” I figured, what the heck, I’ve tried everything else—maybe I’ll calculate some mystical garbage for fun. I’m a total skeptic, but I was desperate for something to focus on besides my own messed-up life.
The Kick-Off: Digging Up the Date
The first step was just finding my birthday. Sounds simple, right? Except I was sitting on the couch and my wallet was way across the room. I felt too lazy to move, but I finally dragged myself over and pulled out my ID. I wrote the full date down on a napkin. I didn’t even bother getting real paper, that’s how little I cared if this worked. I just needed the numbers lined up.
My date was May 20th, 1988. I didn’t want to break it down into the usual Life Path way, which gets all complex. I saw a quick method that just said “add everything up.” That sounded like my kind of math—simple and fast. I was ready to see what kind of garbage number I was.
Here’s how I ran the tape on that napkin:
- The month (May) is 5. So, I started with 5.
- The day is 20. So, I added 2 and 0. That’s 2.
- The year is 1988. This is where it got messy.
I grabbed a pen and started adding like a third grader. Seriously, I felt really dumb doing this math on a Friday night, but I was committed. I wrote it all out just to be sure.
Month + Day Digits + Year Digits
$$5 + (2 + 0) + (1 + 9 + 8 + 8)$$
The Panic and the Simple Fix
I added the year digits first because they looked massive: $1+9$ is ten. $10+8$ is eighteen. $18+8$ is twenty-six. Okay, twenty-six for the year. The numbers just kept piling up. I was thinking this was going to be some huge, meaningless number.
$$5 + 2 + 26$$
I added the final pieces: $5+2$ is seven. $7+26$. That equals 33.
My heart sank. 33. I knew the Arcana only went up to 22. The Magician is 1, The World is 21, and The Fool is 0 or 22. I looked at 33 and thought, “See, I knew this was stupid. The math doesn’t even work.” I almost tossed the napkin and went to watch TV, but I had wasted twenty minutes, so I figured I might as well see if I messed up a rule.
I searched again, and that’s when I saw the super-simple, one-line rule I had missed. If your total is over 22, you just reduce it. Not complicated reduction like some of the other numerology stuff. Just add the two digits of the total together, and that’s your final Arcana Number, especially if you are only looking for the Major Arcana association.
My total was 33. So I did the one last, tiny piece of addition:
$$3 + 3 = 6$$
Six. Now that was a number that made sense. It fit the range. I felt this huge, silly wave of relief. I had actually done the thing. I got a real result instead of some giant number that busted the whole system.
What I Got Out of It
The result was 6. I looked up number 6 in the Major Arcana. The card is The Lovers. Now, I’m not talking about romance here; I read the meaning, and it was all about choices, alignment, and finding harmony between two paths.
And that’s when it hit me. Right now, I was absolutely stuck between two big career choices and fighting with my closest friend because neither of us was listening. The number wasn’t a fortune-telling thing, but it was like a massive arrow pointing straight at my current problem: I couldn’t make a damn decision, and I needed alignment. It wasn’t magic, it was just a label for the mess I was already in.
I spent the next hour just digging into what “The Lovers” meant in the context of career or friendship. I started to see my situation clearly. Not because of a mystical number, but because doing this stupid little calculation forced me to focus on one thing and then interpret a symbol, which got me out of my own head. It made me realize I was the one creating the internal conflict.
I ended the night with the napkin tucked into my laptop, feeling a little less useless and actually kind of productive. Sometimes, you just need a weird, simple ritual to pull your brain together. It definitely worked, even if I still think it’s all just numbers and a bit of a laugh.
