Decan 2 of Cancer

This is the second ten-degree segment of Cancer, the cardinal water sign, spanning 10 to 20 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces is Mercury, reached by continuing the planetary sequence around the thirty-six decans. Historically the decan is the most ancient stratum 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, three decans to a sign.

The Golden Dawn of 1888 assigned the thirty-six minor arcana to the decans; this segment bears the Three of Cups, titled Abundance, its Mercury-in-Cancer planet taken from the face ruler, the threes marking the flowering of each suit, here the overflowing of the waters. The tarot mapping is a modern overlay laid over the far older decan scheme, and where a source presents such imagery as ancient Egyptian it is mistaking the layers.

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

The card on the decan

In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Three 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 Cancer is a Water sign and takes a card of Cups, 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.