♌ Leo · 0 to 10 degrees
The first decan of Leo
Leo under Saturn: warmth held in check, and a seriousness inside a sign that is not naturally serious.
At a glance
| Degrees | 0 to 10 degrees of Leo |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Saturn |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Leo (ruler: the Sun) |
| Golden Dawn card | Five of Wands |
| Element and modality | fire, fixed |
Saturn in the first face of Leo is an awkward pairing and the tradition treats it as one: restriction on a sign that wants to shine, which is exactly what the corresponding tarot card, the Five of Wands, was titled Strife for.
Read as ambition that has to be earned rather than assumed, and as confidence arriving later than in the other Leo faces.
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 Leo.
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 Five of Wands, which is why that card carries Saturn and Leo 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 Wands 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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