♑ Capricorn · 20 to 30 degrees
The third decan of Capricorn
Capricorn with the Sun: authority as the centre of a life.
At a glance
| Degrees | 20 to 30 degrees of Capricorn |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Sun |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Virgo (ruler: Mercury) |
| Golden Dawn card | Four of Pentacles |
| Element and modality | earth, cardinal |
The solar face of Capricorn is read as vocation in the older sense: the work becomes the identity, and the identity is public.
Associated with holding what has been gained, which is the corresponding Four of Pentacles and its double edge.
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 Sun. The modern decanate system gives each decan to one of the three signs of its own element, here Virgo.
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 Sun means →The tarot connection
The Golden Dawn mapped the 36 decans onto the 36 minor arcana pips, two through ten. This decan is the Four of Pentacles, which is why that card carries Sun and Capricorn 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.
Four 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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