♍ Virgo · 10 to 20 degrees
The second decan of Virgo
Virgo with Venus: precision applied to what is beautiful and to what is worth having.
At a glance
| Degrees | 10 to 20 degrees of Virgo |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Venus |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Capricorn (ruler: Saturn) |
| Golden Dawn card | Nine of Pentacles |
| Element and modality | earth, mutable |
Venus in the second face of Virgo is read as refinement: taste with a technical basis, and a preference for fewer good things over many adequate ones.
Associated with earned comfort and with independence, which is what the corresponding Nine of Pentacles is about.
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 Venus. The modern decanate system gives each decan to one of the three signs of its own element, here Capricorn.
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 Venus means →The tarot connection
The Golden Dawn mapped the 36 decans onto the 36 minor arcana pips, two through ten. This decan is the Nine of Pentacles, which is why that card carries Venus and Virgo 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.
Nine of Pentacles 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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