♒ Aquarius · 0 to 10 degrees
The first decan of Aquarius
Aquarius with Venus: principle applied to people, and warmth held at a slight distance.
At a glance
| Degrees | 0 to 10 degrees of Aquarius |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Venus |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Aquarius (ruler: Uranus, and Saturn traditionally) |
| Golden Dawn card | Five of Swords |
| Element and modality | air, fixed |
Venus in the first face of Aquarius is read as affection for humanity in general and independence in particular, which is a real combination rather than a contradiction.
Associated with a victory that costs the room, which the corresponding Five of Swords 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 Venus. The modern decanate system gives each decan to one of the three signs of its own element, here Aquarius.
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 Five of Swords, which is why that card carries Venus and Aquarius 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.
Five of Swords 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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