♓ Pisces · 0 to 10 degrees
The first decan of Pisces
Pisces under Saturn: dissolution meeting structure, and the discipline inside a mystical sign.
At a glance
| Degrees | 0 to 10 degrees of Pisces |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Saturn |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Pisces (ruler: Neptune, and Jupiter traditionally) |
| Golden Dawn card | Eight of Cups |
| Element and modality | water, mutable |
Saturn in the first face of Pisces is read as the serious end of the sign: contemplative practice with a rule attached, and compassion that is exercised rather than merely felt.
Associated with walking away from something that is not broken, which is exactly the corresponding Eight of Cups.
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 Saturn. The modern decanate system gives each decan to one of the three signs of its own element, here Pisces.
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 Saturn means →The tarot connection
The Golden Dawn mapped the 36 decans onto the 36 minor arcana pips, two through ten. This decan is the Eight of Cups, which is why that card carries Saturn and Pisces 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.
Eight of Cups 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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