♉ Taurus · 10 to 20 degrees

The second decan of Taurus

Taurus with the Moon, which is exalted in this sign: comfort, security and the settled body.

At a glance

The second decan of Taurus at a glance
Degrees10 to 20 degrees of Taurus
Face ruler (Chaldean)Moon
Decanate ruler (modern)Virgo (ruler: Mercury)
Golden Dawn cardSix of Pentacles
Element and modalityearth, fixed

The Moon is exalted in Taurus and the tradition treats this decan as the most placid ten degrees in the zodiac. Home, food, touch, and the accumulation of what makes a life feel safe.

Read as generous and slow to move. The risk in it is inertia rather than any kind of harm.

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 Moon. 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 Moon 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 Pentacles, which is why that card carries Moon and Taurus 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 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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