Decans: where the cards sit in the year

The last lesson showed the diagram under the pictures, and one line of it said that the numbered cards from Two to Ten take the thirty-six decans. This lesson makes that line useful. Once you know where a card sits in the zodiac, you can see when in the year it belongs, lay it beside your own birth chart, and notice when the cards in a spread are talking about the same stretch of sky.

As before, none of this is needed to read the cards. It is a second layer, for anyone who enjoys astrology or wants to.

What a decan is

The zodiac is a circle of twelve signs, each thirty degrees wide. Split each sign into three slices of ten degrees and you have thirty-six decans: 0 to 10 degrees, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30. Each decan is given a planet as its ruler.

The Golden Dawn gave each of the thirty-six numbered cards one decan, and its rulers follow the oldest order of the planets, the Chaldean order, from slowest to fastest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, and round again. The astrology lesson on decans teaches a different way of choosing rulers, by element, so the two tables won't always match. The cards use this one.

Finding a card's place

You don't need a table. Two rules find any numbered card's sign.

• The suit gives the element. Wands are the Fire signs, Cups the Water signs, Swords the Air signs and Pentacles the Earth signs.
• The number gives the kind of sign. Twos, Threes and Fours fall in the cardinal signs, the ones that begin a season: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. Fives, Sixes and Sevens fall in the fixed signs: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. Eights, Nines and Tens fall in the mutable signs: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. In each sign, the lowest of the three numbers takes the first ten degrees.

So the Seven of Cups is a Water card, and a Seven, so it sits in the fixed Water sign, Scorpio, in its last ten degrees. Its ruler there is Venus. The Two of Wands is the very first decan of the year: Fire, cardinal, the opening of Aries, ruled by Mars.

The Aces have no decan. The Golden Dawn made them the roots of their elements, standing behind the whole suit.

Court cards and Majors

Court cards cover a wider stretch: thirty degrees each, starting at 20 degrees of one sign and running to 20 degrees of the next, so they straddle two signs. The Golden Dawn named its courts differently from the 1909 deck. Its mounted King is the deck's Knight, its Queen is the Queen, and its Prince is the deck's King. Queens sit mostly in the cardinal signs, the deck's Kings in the fixed signs and its Knights in the mutable ones. The Queen of Wands, for instance, runs from 20 degrees of Pisces to 20 degrees of Aries: the turn of spring. The Pages have no stretch of the zodiac at all. Not every writer maps the titles this way for the 1909 deck, so if you read about court card astrology, check which convention the writer is using.

The Majors you met in the last lesson: twelve take a whole sign, seven a planet, and three an element. The Emperor is Aries; The Tower is Mars.

A card in season

The Sun spends about ten days in each decan. Readers who work with these attributions take that as the card's season: the Two of Wands at the end of March, the Seven of Cups in mid-November. A court card's season lasts about a month. If you draw a card while the Sun is passing through its decan, the card is said to be in season: it belongs to now.

Some readers use the same idea to suggest timing, taking a card's season as a window when its matter may come to the fore. Treat that as a gentle pointer, not a date.

Your birth chart and the cards

If you know your birth chart, each card's degrees can be laid over it. When one of your planets, or your Ascendant or Midheaven, falls inside a card's stretch, that card touches that part of you. The closest tie of all is your own planet sitting in the decan it rules: someone born with Venus at 25 degrees of Aries has a personal link with the Four of Wands, which is Venus in the last decan of Aries.

The ruler's condition counts too. A planet can be strong or weak in a sign. Mars in Aries, the Two of Wands, is at home there. The Sun in Aries, the Three of Wands, is exalted. Venus in Aries, the Four of Wands, is in its detriment, working against the grain of the sign; Venus in Virgo, the Nine of Pentacles, is in its fall. This shades a card rather than overturning it. The Nine of Pentacles is still a card of comfort earned, but the comfort may have taken some care to reach.

A card that keeps coming back in your readings over a few weeks is worth noticing in the same way: it keeps pointing to the same part of the year, and the same planet.

When the cards' places meet

Decans really come into their own when several cards in a spread share or relate their places.

• One sign, several cards. Two decans of the same sign put that sign's qualities in the foreground, and even more so if the sign's own Major is there too.
• One planet, several cards. Several decans ruled by the same planet let that planet colour the reading. Mars rules six decans, more than any other planet, and its Major is The Tower.
• A sequence. Decans that follow one another round the zodiac, like the Three and then the Four of Wands, read as one process moving forward through time.
• Signs in relation. Astrology relates whole signs to one another: opposite signs as a polarity to balance, signs in square as friction that asks for action, signs in trine as easy support, signs in sextile as an opening that needs a step. Applying this to the cards is a modern extension rather than something the Golden Dawn taught, but it follows naturally from their scheme. It also means two cards of the same number always share a kind of sign, so they sit either in the same sign, in square or in opposition. Two Twos are always in some tension with each other.

A worked example

Alex is about to open a small pottery workshop and asks: "What do I need to know as I open the workshop?" The reading is made on 8 April, and Alex was born with Venus at 25 degrees of Aries. They draw three cards for Past, Present and Future.

The Three of Wands is the Past, The Emperor the Present and the Four of Wands the Future. Read on their own, they already tell a hopeful story: plans sent out like ships, a moment of taking charge, then a celebration at the gate.

Now place them in the zodiac:

• All three are Aries. The Three of Wands is the Sun in Aries, 10 to 20 degrees. The Emperor is Aries itself. The Four of Wands is Venus in Aries, 20 to 30 degrees. With the sign's own Major in the middle, Aries speaks loudly: a start, initiative, the nerve to go first.
• A sequence. The Three and the Four are neighbouring decans, so the reading moves forward in one unbroken stretch of the year, from planning to opening.
• In season. On 8 April the Sun is at about 18 degrees of Aries, inside the Three of Wands. That card belongs to now: the planning stage is still live, not quite behind Alex yet.
• Alex's own chart. Alex's natal Venus sits in the Four of Wands' decan, the one Venus rules. That is the closest tie a card can have to a chart, so the opening is the card most personal to Alex.
• The rulers. The Sun is exalted in Aries, so the planning card is strong. Venus is in its detriment there, so the celebration may come quickly and a little roughly: worth slowing down enough to enjoy the people who turn up.

The astrology hasn't changed the reading. It has deepened it: the whole spread is one Aries story, already under way, and the part that matters most to Alex personally is the welcome at the end.

In our own readings

Tarot readings here include a section called Decans and the chart. For each card with a place in the zodiac it shows that place, any of your natal planets and angles inside it (the angles only if your birth time is known), whether the Sun was passing through it when the reading was made, any other planets there, whether the same card came up in your recent readings, and how the decan's ruler fares in its sign. It then shows how the cards' places meet: shared signs and planets, the sign's own Major, sequences and sign relations.

What to take from this

• Suit gives the element, number gives the kind of sign. That finds any numbered card's decan.
• Courts span thirty degrees across two signs; Pages and Aces have no stretch of their own.
• A card is in season while the Sun passes through it, and personal when your own planets sit there.
• Read the places together. Shared signs, shared planets, sequences and sign relations tie a spread together.

Next, tarot among the divining arts: the cards as one instrument in a larger family.