
notXanathar |

If one looks at the sorcerer bloodlines list, it is fairly obvious that different groups of planes are associated with different traditions of magic. The aligned planes are associated with the divine, the elemental ones are associated with primal (with exception given to genies specifically), the outer spaces between worlds ia! extra-dimensional entity of the week are occult, the material plane is arcane (sort of, for obvious reasons it's not exactly reliable), and the astral and ethereal have yet to be seen(I'm banking on occult for ethereal and either occult or arcane for the astral).
For the most part these are fairly obvious. The aligned planes are important to the whole 'where does one go when one dies', so of course they are integrated into religion. But why oh why is the first world primal where the plane of shadow is occult.
To deal with the obvious counters, the basic symmetry argument doesn't hold up, since either it applies to all transitive planes, or it applies to only those 2. If all transitive planes have it, then one of them has to be divine, but that feels very out of place, at best you could shoehorn it in for the ethereal. On the other hand, if it's only shadow and first world then why does the first world get primal. It is the obvious first choice to be sure, but the fey magic is also almost entirely defined in folklore as being mind affecting, with the background of trees being little more than coincidence. It feels a little off to me that the focus is more on the fey's ability to have pretty flowers than to get inside your head and make you beleive that there are pretty flowers, and also that said flowers are far more interesting than whatever thing is trying to kill you.
At this point or before you should have looked at the title and asked yourself 'didn't this person say that it was only a minor annoyance?'. To you, dear, astute, intelligent reader I can only apologise for having you read through my mad ramblings and say this. I was yanked out of my blissful ignorance a few nights prior, and if I'm going down I'm taking you all with me in a way that is hopefully coherent and well reasoned. Sorry again.

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Primal is intuitive approach to tangible things.
Occult is intellectual approach to intangible things.
First World going Primal and Shadow being Occult seem fitting.
The planes' structure predates the 4 traditions (which did not exist in PF1). So I think absolute symmetry is not to be expected (but could open interesting new vistas).

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The official explanation is that they're actually linked to the essences, not the traditions directly.
Elemental and Material planes are the Material essence, which is why you get elementals in both primal and arcane. First World, Positive, and Negative planes are Vital essence. Most transitive planes are Mental essence (shadow being a weird exception, it is sort of all of the essences, and of course the First World is mostly not Mental). Aligned planes are Spiritual Essence.
All that said, your observations are correct, resulting from the post hoc attempt to make the cosmology fit the new explanation.