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Friday, January 11, 2019

The Decan Wheel

The decan wheel is extremely helpful in visualizing the houses within the zodiac and the tarot cards that lie within them. It is a great go-to that will help you identify and memorize where the tarot cards live as well as what energies are likely to manifest within them. I printed the one below and taped it into my notebook for quick access when practicing tarot.  

Ten degrees of separation

The zodiac houses span thirty degree sections of the wheel going counterclockwise. Aries is the first house and Pisces is the twelfth. Each of the house is further subdivided into ten degree segments called decans or decanates. The Minor Arcana tarot cards (two through ten) are assigned to each decan. The two, three and four of Wands span the entire house Aries for example.

From there you can see the suits are not arranged in order. They are assigned to houses with the same element. For example all Wands correspond to fire signs. So the next order of wands can be found in Leo, then in Sagittarius.
 
Decan Wheel

Each card/decan has a co-ruling planet. Starting with the two card in Aries we have the rulerships of Mars, the Sun and then Mercury. These are considered co-rulers because Mars is the ruling planet of the entire Aries house. The wheel also indicates the elemental triangle of Fire (triplicity), and the Cardinal aspect (quadruplicity) of Aries.    

Court Cards 

The Aces and Court Cards live on the outside rim of the wheel. In the THOTH deck the Knights, Queens, and Princesses rule entire thirty degree segments. Notice they are not evenly placed over the houses. This is on purpose. It reflects the constant interaction and balance seeking between the elements.  For example the Queen of Wands is the watery part of fire and she rules the last decan of Pisces and the first two decan of Aries. That is one third of a water sign and two thirds of a fire sign. One might think that the highest order of fire, the Knight of Wands, would rule the most pure fire sign of Aries.  However such a configuration would be unbalanced, emphasizing too much fire in one place.  Therefore the knight's rulership is assigned to Sagittarius-the least pure fire sign.  I will do a segment soon on the breakdown of the card ranks and their element classifications.     


Decan Wheel with Court Cards


How the Wheel relates to Tarot 

Decan wheels vary in design in terms of what data they contain. The more advanced wheel below adds some nice features. It includes all the previous information plus house planetary rulerships and exaltation.  It is worthwhile considering these attributes when practicing tarot, they add rich detail that might not otherwise be so easily seen in a card.  Similar to the planetary aspects in astrology, we can view the cards through the lens of the ruling planets, elements and images. 




Deluxe Decan Wheel

21 comments:

  1. Thanks for the information. I like the way you teach.

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    Replies
    1. Are you a marketer? Anyways thank you for lettting me know that.

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  3. Hello, I have a question as I've been trying to understand the Decans further. For example, when I look at Aries in the Decan wheel,I always see the planetary signs of Mars, Sun, and Venus. But when I read about it, there is always an answer saying different, which is Mars, Sun, and Jupiter. I noticed different answers for different signs as well. Is there something I am misreading/overlooking? Thanks

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    Replies
    1. Mabey different sources have different information and sometimes the information can be wrong. So what I would do is find who made the website and when it was last updated. Also I would look if it was copyrighted and try to see the original website. If it didn't have any of what I listed then it probably isn't a reliable site.

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    2. I'm replying an entire year after the OP post, but this info might help someone else in the future. There are 2 different systems for determining Decans -- the Chaldean Decans (mars, sun, venus rule the aries sign, it's based off the order of the 7 traditional planets) and then Decan Rulership by Triplicity (mars, sun, and jupiter are planets that rule fire elements)

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    3. Dang good looking sense that makes;
      I also gonna add somewhere I heard about the uncertainty of some of these movements subtle attributes. Sometimes...I may be all signs..., hehehe. Glad we made it this far so far. Looking forward to meeting

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  4. Thank you so much - VERY helpful!

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  5. Thank You! Helped me TREMENOUSLY!

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  6. How can you print this amazing decan wheel???

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    1. You right click with your mouse and go down to where it says print. Or you can just put in Ctrl+p. ;)

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  7. This is hard to read even though I have good eyes, but by reading the comments before this one, I can tell that this must be a very helpful source. I will look at my phone and maybe that will be better. Thank you for creating the Decan Wheel!!

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    1. Never mind I found out how to technically zoom in with the computer. By the way if you didn't know how to print with the computer all you need to do is right click your mouse and go down to where it says print. Or you can just press Ctrl+p. ;)
      Oh, and if you want to zoom up just press the photo.

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  8. Thank you for a moral

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  9. Very nice and informative. This is one of the best FREE sources for a new Tarot Reader that I have seen yet! Thanks!!

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