♌ Leo · 20 to 30 degrees
The third decan of Leo
Leo with Mars: fire in a fixed sign, held and pointed.
At a glance
| Degrees | 20 to 30 degrees of Leo |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Mars |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Aries (ruler: Mars) |
| Golden Dawn card | Seven of Wands |
| Element and modality | fire, fixed |
Mars in the last face of Leo is read as sustained force rather than a burst: courage that holds a position, and considerable difficulty backing down.
Associated with defending what has been built, which is precisely what the corresponding Seven of Wands describes.
Two systems, two answers
There are two decan rulership systems in circulation and they give different rulers for the same ten degrees. The older face system runs the seven classical planets in Chaldean order around the whole zodiac, and gives this decan to Mars. The modern decanate system gives each decan to one of the three signs of its own element, here Aries.
Neither is presented here as the correct one. The tarot attributions follow the face system, most popular modern astrology follows the decanate system, and knowing which one a source is using explains most of the apparent contradictions you will find elsewhere.
What Mars means →The tarot connection
The Golden Dawn mapped the 36 decans onto the 36 minor arcana pips, two through ten. This decan is the Seven of Wands, which is why that card carries Mars and Leo as its attributions in any Golden Dawn-derived deck.
The pips run by modality rather than in zodiacal order: the cardinal sign of each element takes two to four, the fixed sign five to seven, and the mutable sign eight to ten. It is the detail most often got wrong, including by us until a test caught it.
Seven of Wands on Memento Arcana →Which decan are you?
Your decan is decided by the degree of your Sun, not by the date alone, and the chart gives you the degree of every planet as well.
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