Decan 2 of Pisces

This is the second ten-degree segment of Pisces, the mutable water sign, spanning 10 to 20 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces is Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces, so here the face ruler and the sign's own ruler coincide. Historically the decan is the most ancient layer of the tradition: the thirty-six were Egyptian stars, painted on Middle Kingdom coffin lids as a night-clock, and were fitted into the twelve zodiac signs only after Babylonian astrology reached Egypt.

The Golden Dawn of 1888 assigned the thirty-six minor arcana to the decans; this segment bears the Nine of Cups, titled Happiness, its Jupiter-in-Pisces planet taken from the face ruler, benevolent Jupiter at home in the water sign giving the traditional wish card its abundant contentment. The tarot mapping is a modern overlay laid over the far older decan scheme rather than part of the inherited astronomy.

The second decan of Pisces runs from 10 to 20 degrees of the sign and is ruled, in the scheme this atlas records, by Jupiter.

The card on the decan

In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Nine of Cups. The mapping is one to one and exhaustive: the thirty-six small cards numbered two to ten across the four suits match the thirty-six decans exactly, taken in order from the Two of Wands at the first decan of Aries. The suit follows the sign's element, so Pisces is a Water sign and takes a card of Cups, and the rank follows the position in the sequence, which puts the nine here.

Three layers, three periods

The decans are Egyptian: thirty-six star groups whose successive risings told the hours of the night, attested on coffin lids from the Middle Kingdom onward. The division of the zodiac into thirty-six ten degree segments with planetary rulers is Hellenistic, several centuries later, and it is a different object that inherited the name and the number. The tarot assignment is later again, and belongs to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century. None of it is Egyptian, and this atlas records the three as three.

What the atlas is recording

The degrees and the ruler are the attributions this atlas holds for this decan, and the card is the Golden Dawn's. All of them are traditions with variants rather than settled facts, and the decan itself, as a ten degree segment of a sign, is the only part that is simply arithmetic.