Decan 2 of Aries

This is the second ten-degree segment of Aries, the cardinal fire sign, spanning 10 to 20 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces, the scheme used on this site, in which the seven visible planets are assigned to the thirty-six decans in sequence from Mars at zero Aries, is the Sun. The decans themselves are the oldest layer of this material: they began as thirty-six Egyptian star groups whose successive risings marked the ten-day weeks of the year and the hours of the night, and were only later absorbed into the Greek zodiac as ten-degree subdivisions of the signs and given planetary rulers.

The Golden Dawn, from 1888, mapped the thirty-six numbered minor cards onto the decans in order; this segment carries the Three of Wands, to which they gave the title Virtue, the planet taken directly from its Sun-ruled face. That tarot layer is a modern Western overlay, not part of the ancient decan tradition.

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

The card on the decan

In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Three of Wands. 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 Aries is a Fire sign and takes a card of Wands, and the rank follows the position in the sequence, which puts the three 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.