Decan 3 of Aries

This is the third ten-degree segment of Aries, the cardinal fire sign, spanning 20 to 30 degrees. Its ruler in the Chaldean order of faces is Venus, the planet reached by continuing the sequence of the seven planets, slowest to fastest, around the wheel from Mars at zero Aries. The decan is the oldest stratum of astrological tradition: the thirty-six decans were originally Egyptian stars, painted on Middle Kingdom coffin lids as a calendar and a star-clock, and were folded into the twelve zodiac signs only when Babylonian astrology reached Egypt, three decans to a sign.

The Golden Dawn of 1888 assigned the thirty-six minor arcana to the decans in zodiacal order; this segment bears the Four of Wands, titled Completion or Perfected Work, its Venus attribution taken straight from the face ruler. That tarot correspondence is a modern overlay on the far older decan scheme, useful but not ancient.

The third decan of Aries runs from 20 to 30 degrees of the sign and is ruled, in the scheme this atlas records, by Venus.

The card on the decan

In the Golden Dawn's assignment this decan carries the Four of Wands. The mapping is one to one and exhaustive: the thirty-six small cards numbered two to ten across the four suits match the thirty-six decans exactly, taken in order from the Two of Wands at the first decan of Aries. The suit follows the sign's element, so Aries is a Fire sign and takes a card of Wands, and the rank follows the position in the sequence, which puts the four here.

Why the rulers carry over between signs

The thirty-six rulers run in the Chaldean order, the seven planets arranged from slowest to fastest as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon, applied one after another right round the circle beginning with Mars at the first degree of Aries. Because thirty-six is not divisible by seven, the sequence does not restart at each sign. It runs straight through the boundaries, which is why the rulers of a sign's three decans are not the sign's own planets and why the pattern only closes after the whole zodiac.

What the atlas is recording

The degrees and the ruler are the attributions this atlas holds for this decan, and the card is the Golden Dawn's. All of them are traditions with variants rather than settled facts, and the decan itself, as a ten degree segment of a sign, is the only part that is simply arithmetic.