← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 112/121
Decans in tarot
In the system of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, most of the tarot has an address in the zodiac. The thirty-six numbered cards from Two to Ten are the thirty-six decans — ten-degree slices of the signs, each ruled by a planet. The court cards cover thirty degrees each, and many Major Arcana stand for a whole sign or a planet. Knowing a card's place lets a reader lay it beside a birth chart or the sky, and see how the cards of a spread relate to one another.
The decan cards
Each sign of thirty degrees has three decans: 0–10°, 10–20° and 20–30°. Book T gives them their rulers in the old Chaldean order of the planets — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon — the same order astrologers call the faces. So the Two of Wands is Mars in Aries, 0–10°; the Three of Wands the Sun in Aries; the Four of Wands Venus in Aries. Mathers began his list at Leo, with Saturn ruling the Five of Wands, but the sequence is the same one that runs from Mars at the start of Aries round to Mars again at the end of Pisces.
Two simple rules find any 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, Fives, Sixes and Sevens in the fixed signs, and Eights, Nines and Tens in the mutable signs, in that order through the sign.
So the Seven of Cups is the last decan of the fixed Water sign, Scorpio, ruled by Venus. The Aces have no decan: Book T makes them the roots of their elements.
The court cards and the Majors
Book T gives each of three court ranks per suit a span of thirty degrees running from 20° of one sign to 20° of the next — the last decan of one sign and the first two of the following one. The Golden Dawn's titles differ from Waite's: its mounted King is the Knight of the Rider deck, its Queen is the Queen, and its Prince is the Rider King. The Queens hold mainly cardinal signs, the Princes fixed and the mounted figures mutable: the Queen of Wands runs from 20° Pisces to 20° Aries. The Pages — the Golden Dawn's Princesses — have no span, ruling instead a quarter of the heavens, like the Aces. Readers who use Rider-style decks do not all map the titles the same way, so it is worth saying which convention is in use.
Twelve Majors take a sign through their Hebrew letter (The Emperor is Aries), seven take a planet (The Magician is Mercury), and three take an element. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps the same decans and spans, though it re-titles the courts again.
How decans meet a chart and the sky
- Your chart in a card's stretch. If a planet or angle of your birth chart falls inside a card's degrees, the card is read as touching that part of you. The strongest tie is your own planet in the decan it rules: natal Venus at 25° Aries and the Four of Wands.
- In season. Readers who time with decans take the days when the Sun passes through a card's stretch — about ten days for a decan card, about a month for a court — as that card's season. Other planets passing through it on the day add their colour.
- The ruler's dignity. A decan's ruler may be strong or weak in its sign. Mars in Aries (Two of Wands) is at home, in its domicile; the Sun in Aries (Three of Wands) is exalted; Venus in Aries (Four of Wands) and Saturn in Leo (Five of Wands) are in detriment; Venus in Virgo (Nine of Pentacles) is in its fall. This shades a card's tone; it does not turn a bright card dark.
- A card that keeps returning. A decan card drawn again and again over a few weeks keeps pointing at the same stretch of the year and the same planet.
How decans meet one another
- Several decans of one sign emphasise that sign, especially with the sign's own Major beside them — the Three and Four of Wands with The Emperor all speak of Aries.
- Several decans ruled by one planet let that planet colour the reading, more so when its Major is drawn: Mars rules six decans, and its Major is The Tower.
- Consecutive decans — the Three then the Four of Wands, or the Four of Wands then the Five of Pentacles across the turn from Aries into Taurus — read as one process unfolding through the year.
- Signs in relation. Cards in opposite signs suggest a polarity, in square friction, in trine easy support, in sextile an opening. This applies astrology's oldest way of relating whole signs to the cards; it is a modern extension rather than a Book T rule. One consequence: two cards of the same number always share a kind of sign, so they stand in the same sign, in square or in opposition.
In a reading here
Tarot readings here show a section called Decans and the chart. For each card with a place it gives the decan, span, sign or planet; your natal planets and angles inside it (angles only when the birth time is known); whether the Sun was there when the reading was made; other planets passing through; recent readings in which the same card came up; and, for a decan card, whether its ruler is in domicile, exaltation, detriment or fall. It then lists how the places meet — the same sign, the sign's Major, the same planet, a sequence, and the sign relations. Beside it, Patterns across the spread counts the multiples.