♏ Scorpio · 10 to 20 degrees
The second decan of Scorpio
Scorpio with the Sun: depth given a centre, and a life organised around what is not discussed.
At a glance
| Degrees | 10 to 20 degrees of Scorpio |
|---|---|
| Face ruler (Chaldean) | Sun |
| Decanate ruler (modern) | Pisces (ruler: Neptune, and Jupiter traditionally) |
| Golden Dawn card | Six of Cups |
| Element and modality | water, fixed |
The solar face of Scorpio is read as identity built in the eighth-house territory: intimacy, crisis and transformation, approached deliberately rather than endured.
Associated with memory and with the past returning, which the corresponding Six of Cups carries.
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 Pisces.
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 Six of Cups, which is why that card carries Sun and Scorpio 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.
Six of Cups 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.
Calculate my birth chart