Today, I want to explain the importance of the decans and their rulers.
This is the wheel of the year. Twelve astrological signs - we all know them. Each astrological sign occupies c. 30° of the 360° that make up the circle (because 12 x 30 = 360). If you take now each sign and divide the 30° into three smaller segments, you get three decans - meaning three segments of 10° within each astrological sign.
Now we're in Cancer - it just began, so we're in the first decan. In c. ten days, we'll enter the second decan, and then the last decan. When the c 30 days/30° are over, we enter the next sign.
Sorry if that was too obvious... I simply remember the long months on AT when I stopped reading as soon as the word DECAN came up. I was sure that it's something so esoteric I could never understand it. Until I understood.
What's the difference between the decans? Each is ruled by another planet. The seven planets that are visible to the naked eye, the seven planets known since the earliest days of mankind when the knowledge of star constellations was important and probably the first study of mankind.
These seven planets (who also gave their number and names to the week and weekdays we know until today) are:
Saturn (far away, slow, cold yellow light)
Jupiter (radiant light, moves a bit quicker, dominates the skies when he's up)
Mars (reddish light, moves quicker than Jupiter)
Sun (was thought then to be a planet circling around Earth, moving visibly all the time, gives not only light but also warmth)
Venus (moves quicker than the Sun, always close to the sun, never visible in the middle of the night or high up like the other planets, radiant Evening or Morning Star)
Mercury (difficult to see because he moves so quickly and is often so close to the sun that we can't make him out)
Moon (not only moves quickly and visibly but also changes his shape from one night to the next, sometimes visible in the daytime)
- geocentric planetary order.gif (7.2 KiB) Viewed 20333 times
From watching how these "wandering stars" behave, the ancients came to the conclusion that they have different characters and influence us humans differently. They also received names that reflected their character, and the mythological stories woven around each character reflected their celestial behaviour. Myth and the observation of nature were born together - until today, astronomers give mythological names to new objects. Jupiter's moons are called after mythological Zeus'/Jupiter's lovers, Saturn's moons carry names of mythological figures associated with his myth etc. It's actually really fascinating to see how the human brain connected these things. Stars, planets, constellations were really part of the human experience, until a not-so-long time ago.
Back to the order of the planets. According to their speed, the ancient Chaldeans saw them as arranged in the skies in this order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon (I mentioned already that I use the acronym SIMSUMM to remember it).
And each decan is ruled by one of the planets, in the Chaldean order. The year starts with the first decan of Aries at the time of the vernal (spring) euqinox, and it ends with the last decan of Pisces. Interestingly, both these decans are ruled by Mars, meaning that we have a strong injection of Mars energy at the "seam" between the old and the new year.
How are these decans connected to the tarot? Esoteric tarots establish (or intuit) that the minor cards (except for the Aces) reflect the energies of each decan. We start the year in the first decan of Aries with Mars - and this is the first numbered minor card of the tarot, the Two of Wands. And now it's obvious how to continue - the first three decans of Aries are associated with the Two, Three and Four of Wands respectively. Fire decans for a fire suit, ruled by Mars, Sun and Venus.
But then Taurus comes along, and with it the element Earth. We can't continue with Wands and switch over to Pentacles/Disks. We continue to count, though, and accordingly, Five, Six and Seven of Pentacles belong to the three decans of Taurus. The Chaldean order continues as well, so these decans are ruled by Mercury, Moon and Saturn - after the seven planets are through, we simply start again with Saturn.
Then we move on to Gemini, and the three decans of Gemini are associated with the three last minors of the Air suit, Swords. Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords are associated with Gemini, and ruled by Jupiter, Mars and the Sun.
And thusly we continue.
This wheel shows the decans of each astrological sign - start reading from the left, from Aries to Taurus
A nice pattern emerges. All cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn), the signs that usher in a new season with strong energies and the will to lead, are associated with the Two, Three and Four of their suits.
Have a look at the wheel - all cardinal signs appear after the diamond symbol of a celestial signpost. Aries comes with the spring equinox, Cancer with the summer solstice, Libra with the autumn equinox and Capricorn with the winter solstice. These are powerful events!
All fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) are associated with the middle minors of each suit, the Five, Six and Seven, and stand for the culmination of each season, its character uninfluenced by the season before or after it. That's why they are fixed.
On the wheel, you can see that these signs are stably anchored in the middle of each season.
All mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) are associated with the last minors of each suit, the Eight, Nine and Ten. They are the signs that let us feel already that the next season is knocking on the door.
Look at the wheel again. These signs seem to be rushing towards the great celestial events when the seasons change.
I like to put it like that: Aries is winter spring (i.e. spring with remnants of winter that are left behind), Taurus is spring spring (spring and only spring), and Gemini is summery spring (spring that changes into summer).
A complete wheel - not only the astrological signs and decans are shown here but also the planetary rulers of each decan
So we have in every minor the influence of the element and suit, of its number (which has numerological and kabbalistic associations), the influence of the astrological sign and the planet who rules its decan. Each of them plays a role, and the mixture gives us the character, the influence of the minor card.
In the Thoth, these influences are clearly depicted and visible. In the RWS, they're hidden behind narrative scenes. In their wake, some deck creators stayed with the narrative scenes and developed them further, and others re-interpreted the esoteric associations (the Tabula Mundi for example went back to the "bare bones" of these associations and built the cards with a strikingly unique AND traditional iconography).
Once you understand this network of esoteric influences on each card, you have a lot of material to start interpreting each card and the whole reading. You look for elements/suits that dominate or are missing, for the strong influence of a planet (if there are three cards from a Venus decan, we have a strong hint that erotic energies are playing out - and if their flow is stopped by a Saturn card, it seems there is some obstacle or frustration on the way), and also for the energies of the decans themselves.
Anthony Louis sees the triple pattern of cardinal-fixed-mutable played out within each astrological sign. All the first decans usher in the suit/sign powerfully, all the second decans show it in its unadulterated form, and all the last decans prepare already for the next suit/sign.
This is an interesting idea but one which sometimes clashes with the character of a card. Let's take the Four of Pentacles. It's so stable that it can hardly move at all - the stable, stubborn Earth element, the very stable number four - but it's a "mutable" i.e. 3rd decan in a cardinal sign (Capricorn) that says goodbye to these decans. To me, the Four of Pentacles shouts fixed, fixed, fixed - I see neither the powers of the cardinal sign that pushes things forward nor the mutable character of a third decan.
But for other cards, it works very well.
I scanned my Thoth cards some time ago to see these patterns better.
These are all the minors from cardinal signs, i.e., the cards Two, Three and Four, from all elements/suits. Each column is the element/Suit: Wands, Pentacles, Swords and Cups, ordered like the astrological signs that always come as Fire, Earth, Air, Water sequence. So we have here the minors associated with the cardinal signs in their elemental suits: Aries/Wands, Capricorn/Earth, Libra/Air and Cancer/Water.
) And the minor cards associated with mutable signs. They the Eight, Nine and Ten of each element/suit/astrological sign. Sagittarius, Virgo, Gemini and Pisces are the mutable signs, and they "close" the sequence of each suit, preparing for the next suit to appear.
I hope my explanation made sense. I'll write about the majors and court cards, too, if anyone's interested.
