Decans
Decan 2 of Capricorn
Capricorn
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Origin 100 BCE to 200 CE
The second decan of Capricorn (10 to 20 degrees), cardinal earth sub-ruled by Mars, exalted in Capricorn and lending sharp, disciplined drive. This decan carries the tarot card Three of Coins, titled Material Works: skilled labor, craftsmanship, and the building of something solid through cooperation. Mars here gives Capricorn its most driven and industrious edge, the hardest-working face of the sign, ambitious, determined, and relentless in the climb, turning discipline into decisive action and effort into concrete, lasting results.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period100 BCE to 200 CE 1Tradition: Hellenistic astrology in Greco-Roman Egypt Origin Period1888 to 1900 3Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Origin Period2100 BCE to 1800 BCE 4Tradition: Egyptian decans on the coffin lids Place of Origin Identity
Degree Range10 Capricorn - 20 Capricorn 1Tradition: Hellenistic astrology in Greco-Roman Egypt Sub-RulerMars 1Tradition: Hellenistic astrology in Greco-Roman Egypt Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionDrekkana Lord: Venus 5Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Correspondences
Tarot CardThree of Coins (Material Works) 3Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Meaning
Decan KeywordsSkilled labor, craftsmanship, and the building of something solid through cooperation 3Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Learn More
The Second Decan of Capricorn
This is the second ten-degree segment of Capricorn, the cardinal earth sign, spanning 10 to 20 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces is Mars, which is exalted in Capricorn, so the face ruler here falls in a sign of its dignity. Historically the decan is the most ancient layer of the tradition: the thirty-six were Egyptian stars, recorded on coffin lids as a star-clock, and were fitted into the twelve zodiac signs only after Babylonian astrology reached Egypt.
The Golden Dawn of 1888 assigned the thirty-six minor arcana to the decans; this segment bears the Three of Coins, titled Works or Material Works, its Mars-in-Capricorn planet taken from the face ruler, exalted Mars in the industrious earth sign matching the card's image of skilled construction and craft. The tarot mapping is a modern overlay laid over the far older decan scheme rather than part of the inherited astronomy.
The Three of Coins of Capricorn, and the Second Decan
The second decan of Capricorn runs from 10 to 20 degrees of the sign and is ruled, in the scheme this atlas records, by Mars.
The card on the decan
In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Three of Coins. 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 Capricorn is a Earth sign and takes a card of Coins, 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.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Mars, Deities This source names Mars directly: "degrees), cardinal earth sub-ruled by Mars, exalted in Capricorn and lending sharp, disciplined drive."
Contains
Corresponds To
Decan 2 of Capricorn corresponds to the Three of Coins, the Golden Dawn pip card assigned to this decan, per its own decan-tarot fact.
Sources
1. A History of Western Astrology
Nicholas Campion, Continuum, 2009vol. 1, on the fitting of the thirty-six decans into the twelve signsView the Source 2. Tetrabiblos
Claudius Ptolemy, W. Foulsham, 1900Book I, on the faces and on the Egyptian decansQuote, Book I, on the faces and on the Egyptian decans
The face is the weakest of the essential dignities. The rulers used here follow the Chaldean order of faces, not the triplicity scheme.
3. A History of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, Duckworth, 2002on the Golden Dawn attribution of the thirty-six numbered minor cards to the decansView the Source 4. Egyptian Astronomical Texts
Otto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker, Brown University Press / Lund Humphries, 1960vol. 1, the decanal star-clocks on Middle Kingdom coffin lids
5. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra
Sage Parashara (attributed), Ranjan Publications, 1984on the drekkana and its lords, the lords of the first, fifth and ninth signs from the signView the Source The Golden Dawn
Israel Regardie, Aries Press, 1937The attribution of the small cards to the decanatesQuote, The attribution of the small cards to the decanates
The tarot card on this decan is the Golden Dawn assignment, which adopts the Chaldean face ruler rather than proposing a rulership of its own.
Liber 777
Aleister Crowley, Walter Scott, 1909Cols. of the decanates and their tarot and planetary attributionsQuote, Cols. of the decanates and their tarot and planetary attributions
Crowley's tabulation of the same Golden Dawn decan attributions.
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