Decan 3 of Taurus

This is the third ten-degree segment of Taurus, the fixed earth sign, spanning 20 to 30 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces is Saturn, following the unbroken sequence of the seven planets around the thirty-six decans. The decan is the oldest layer of astrology: the thirty-six were originally Egyptian star groups, recorded on coffin lids as a star-clock for the hours of the night, and were fitted into the twelve signs of the zodiac only after Babylonian astrology reached Egypt.

The Golden Dawn, from 1888, mapped the numbered minor cards onto the decans in order; this segment carries the Seven of Coins, to which they gave the title Failure, its Saturn-in-Taurus attribution drawn from the face ruler, Saturn's heaviness on the earth sign matching the card's theme of stalled labour. That tarot correspondence is a modern Western overlay on the ancient decan scheme rather than anything inherited from Egypt or the Hellenistic world.

The third decan of Taurus runs from 20 to 30 degrees of the sign and is ruled, in the scheme this atlas records, by Saturn.

The card on the decan

In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Seven of Coins. 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 Taurus is a Earth sign and takes a card of Coins, and the rank follows the position in the sequence, which puts the seven here.

Why the rulers carry over between signs

The thirty-six rulers run in the Chaldean order, the seven planets arranged from slowest to fastest as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon, applied one after another right round the circle beginning with Mars at the first degree of Aries. Because thirty-six is not divisible by seven, the sequence does not restart at each sign. It runs straight through the boundaries, which is why the rulers of a sign's three decans are not the sign's own planets and why the pattern only closes after the whole zodiac.

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.