Ancient Roots: The Decans in Astrology
Part 1: The Astrological Decans
This article on the astrological decans was first published on Astrology Journal and is republished here with mostly minor edits to clarify ideas, update links that were no longer working, clean up the bibliography and references, and generally improve clarity and flow. To improve clarity in the Tarot section, I heavily edited some paragraphs but the underlying content remains unchanged.
Regarding part 2, I finally have the missing piece that was keeping me from writing and publishing that article. The piece turned out to be my relationship with them. I had a breakthrough in that regard which I will share in part 2.
Currently, I am finishing up a design system for an astrology software program and diving into learning more Python so I can write an ephemeris program, so I will write part 2 as I am able. At the end of this article, I have included the chart design for the astrology program. It incorporates the new decan system I am trialing which came out of my insight.
My intention with this series is twofold. First, I want to provide some historical context to show the ancient roots of the decans and how their conception and use in astrology have dramatically changed. On that topic, I also want to share a fascinating idea about the evolution of the human Soul that emerged for me as I considered their history. I’ll cover these topics in this article.
Second, I want to introduce you to the system of essential dignities and debilities (of which the decans are a part) that some astrologers use. I’ll do so in part 2. While used primarily by contemporary traditional astrologers, the decans offer the potential for refining one’s analysis of the chart and thus providing more nuanced interpretations.
Note that in my dive into this subject, I have only scratched the surface. While I have drawn from several sources, including academic works, podcasts, and online resources, my understanding has been shaped, in particular, by Theresa Ainsworth's thesis and Spencer Michaud's podcast. These two sources are in-depth in their coverage of the decans and have provided much of the foundational information. Additional sources have provided other helpful information.
For those who feel drawn to this topic, there is much more that can be learned by diving into primary and other sources. However, I believe this article serves as a good introduction to the topic and may inspire you to look into the topic further.
Introduction: The Decans in Historical Context
The Modern Conception of the Decans
In modern astrology, the decans, also known as faces, are 10-degree segments of the zodiac. For astrological purposes, the zodiac is the wheel of signs, twelve in total, each spanning thirty degrees, that we use to track the movements of planets. To get the 10-degree segments, each sign is divided into three equal parts.
Because there are twelve signs in the zodiac, when we divide each into three equal segments, we wind up with thirty-six decans. Just as each sign is assigned a ruler, so each decan is assigned a ruler. The rulers of the signs are responsible for the sign. The rulers of the decans are sub-rulers, co-responsible for their portion of the sign. I have not yet determined the exact nature of the co-responsibility.
There are three different systems for assigning rulers to the decans. Two seem to be most in use today: the Chaldean system, used by traditional astrologers; and the Triplicity system, used by modern astrologers. These systems use planets as rulers. Another system, advocated in Roman times by the astrologer Marcus Manilius, does not seem to be used today. This system designates signs as rulers instead of planets.1 We’ll cover each of these rulership systems in the next article. In this article, we’ll focus on the history.
Today, the decans are used by some astrologers to gain a more nuanced understanding of planetary placements, for astrological magic practices, and/or for medical astrology purposes. The word decan itself has its roots in the Latin word, decanus, which means “chief of ten”.2 That meaning makes sense as each decan rules over ten degrees of the zodiac. Early on, they also ruled over 10-day stretches, so the definition fits there, too. But this word does not hint at the more sacred roots of the decans, so we’ll start by looking at that.
The Egyptian Origin of the Decans
The general system of decans we use today came down to us from the Greeks, but its roots go back to the ancient Egyptians. Unlike the modern conception of decans as divisions of the zodiac, the decans in ancient Egypt were stars and star clusters, which they saw as manifestations of gods.3
It appears that the decan system as constructed and used by the Egyptians served three functions: to track time, to plan for and conduct rituals in observance of the star gods, and to guide souls in the afterlife. For a few reasons, it is argued that their primary purpose was religious rather than strict timekeeping in our modern sense.4
The first reason is that, while the system was elegant, organic, and accurate enough over shorter periods, it was unreliable over longer periods. Had, early on, they made efforts to make corrections for the inaccuracies, a case could be made that time tracking in the way we think of it today was primary. But it appears they made no such efforts initially.5 The other intriguing consideration is that maps of the decan system are found in coffins, which, according to Theresa Ainsworth, suggests that they were used as guides for souls after death.6
Thus, the decans as understood and used today appear rooted in the sacred. Notably, the purpose of tracking time using this method was not to corral it into predetermined days and months. Rather, it was to track the regular but changing procession of the gods through the sky. By doing so, they could plan and organize their ritualistic practices in observance of them and provide the dead with sky maps for their afterlife journey.
Now let’s look at how the decans worked in ancient Egyptian times.
How the Decan System Worked
First, it is not clear to me if the Egyptians began tracking the hours of the night or the yearly calendar first. Whichever came first, though, nightly and yearly star tracking worked elegantly together.7
To track the hours of the night, they divided its passage into twelve equal sections; the length of the sections changed throughout the year as the length of the night changed. Because of the rotation of the Earth, stars rose above the horizon, culminated, and set in a procession through the sky, just as they do today. When a given star rose above the horizon, that marked the beginning of a new hour.8 You could think of the moment when a star rose as like the striking of a clock, in this case announcing the arrival of a god. As the weeks and months passed, which stars rose at which times shifted.
For their yearly calendar, the Egyptians focused on the stars as they rose on the horizon just before sunrise. As they tracked the stars throughout the year, they found that a given star or star cluster would rise on the horizon for ten days before ceding to the next one. In total, they identified thirty-six stars, each governing one 10-day period, with five days at the end not ruled by any star. These decan stars were the same ones used to identify the night hours, the night and yearly decans in view for a given period shifting in concert.9
From this information, we can see that their year was comprised of 365 days. These days were 24 hours long, but, unlike in our time, how long an hour was varied throughout the year.10 Despite differences with our current time system, we can recognize its roots in this ancient Egyptian decan system. We, too, use 365 days for our calendar year and 24 hours for our days.
But, unlike our secular relationship with time in Western civilization, the Egyptian relationship with it seems to have been sacred.
The Sacred Nature of the Decans
For Egyptians, the stars’ journey through the night sky was seen as a metaphor for life. The rising of the stars above the horizon signified birth. Their journey through the sky signified life. And their setting signified death.11 Although Ainsworth does not provide the word the Egyptians used for decans, she says that A.S. Von Bomhard translated it as “the living”.12 She also notes that the scholars Otto Neugebauer and Richard Parker assert that the Egyptians saw the decans as “living phenomena in the sky”.13
According to Wikipedia, the Egyptian word for decan is baktiu, which they translate as “[those] connected with work”.14 To make sense of these two translations for the same word, I attempted to connect them. What I came up with is not based on a broader knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture or more extensive research into the decans. It is just based on the few facts presented here. I share my attempt because the effort gave me a glimpse into a different orientation to life that is not my baseline orientation today, which I found valuable. Here’s what I came up with:
Given the Egyptian orientation to the sacred, the translation Ainsworth provided, and the meaning Neugebauer and Parker attribute to it according to Ainsworth, we can perhaps think of “the work” as the sacred work of the living. We can in turn think of the living as the gods who created and lived the cycle of birth, life, and death that the people saw reflected in their own lives.
Before I connected the dots in this way, I only understood what I read as intellectual facts. These facts were estranged from any inherent devotional feelings that presumably gave rise to the actual practice as performed by the ancient Egyptian people. While I feel awe when looking at the stars, I do not perceive or experience them as living beings or gods. After I synthesized the meanings, I was surprised to find myself appreciating the devotional motivation at a feeling level.
Thus, whether factually correct or not, the effort was fruitful. I feel that what it did was give me a visceral glimpse into the innate orientation to the sacred that I believe we humans are born with but from which some, if not many of us, have become estranged.
As time passed, the Egyptian perception of the decans evolved. They remained gods, but they began to see them in a new way. Where before they were primarily associated with the afterlife, now they also actively intervened in the affairs of the living. Sometimes, they intervened in positive ways and sometimes in negative ways. Accordingly, the Egyptians began engaging in practices that involved creating and wearing amulets for either protection or support.15
At this time, to continue tracking the history of the decans, we will need to turn our attention to the Greeks. When we do, we’ll see that they not only incorporated the decans into the comprehensive astrological system they created, but they also incorporated an amulet practice.
The Greek Synthesis
It was during this later evolution of the Egyptian decan practice, when the Egyptians were using amulets as protection and support, that Alexander conquered Egypt and the Mediterranean, initiating the Hellenistic period of Greek culture. During the Hellenistic period, the Greeks set to work synthesizing all of the astrological knowledge they learned from the Babylonians and the esoteric wisdom they learned from the Egyptians, adding their own cultural conceptions and innovations.16
When it came to the decans system from Egypt, they had the novel idea to incorporate them into the zodiac inherited from Babylonia.17 As described in the Introduction above, in the Greek system, the decans were tethered to 10-degree segments of the zodiac.
While we typically think of the zodiac as a map of the constellations, and thus stars, in the sky, it is, in fact, a mathematical division of the ecliptic - the path of the planets and Sun - that allows for more accurate charting of planet positions. The confusion comes in because the names of the constellations are used to name the divisions.
During Hellenistic times, the start of the zodiac at zero degrees Aries lined up reasonably well with zero degrees of the Aries constellation. Because of this alignment, we could say that, initially, the decans, as incorporated by the Greeks, continued to be connected with the stars. But the Egyptian and Greek decan systems were fundamentally different: in Egypt, the decans were actual stars; in Hellenistic Greece, they were segments of a mathematical construct overlaid onto the stars.
When the Greeks first created their decan system, according to Greenbaum's supposition, as noted by Ainsworth, they incorporated the Egyptian amulet practice, tailoring it to their unique religious culture. One aspect of that culture involved a class of lesser gods known as daimons. Like the lesser star gods, or decans, of the later Egyptians, Greeks understood daimons to have the power to intervene in human affairs either positively or negatively.18
When they inherited the decans, Greenbaum, as discussed in Ainsworth, posits that the Greeks’ incorporation of amulet practices relating to the decans made them “equivalent” to the daimons. If this thesis is correct, the Greeks believed that the decans could intervene in human affairs either positively or negatively, just like the daimons.19 Thus, initially, it seems that the Greeks carried over the Egyptian tradition, adapting it to their cultural realities and combining it with the astrology they adopted from the Babylonians.
In time, though, the decans evolved into something else entirely. In the next section, we’ll briefly look at some of the evolutionary turns the decans took. After that, I’ll share my speculation about the decan's role in humanity’s evolution. Awareness of the different permutations of the decans over the centuries will provide context for that speculation.
Other Areas of Influence
Over the centuries, the decans were incorporated into medical astrology, astrological magic, the Tarot, and the essential dignities. According to Western scholars, they were also transmitted to the Vedic astrological tradition in India. Although I do not cover the Vedic tradition in this article, I want to mention it here because, as Spencer Michaud points out, unlike in the Western astrological tradition, there have been no breaks in the Vedic tradition. He then notes that, because of that fact, we might be able to learn more about the decans by studying that tradition.20
Medical Astrology
Medical astrology is a vast and complex field, one that I am not well-versed in and that goes beyond the scope of this article. But, I will touch on it as it relates to the decans.
According to Ainsworth, the ability of the decans to cause harm also included illness. Because of this association, they were incorporated into medical astrology practice.21 In this permutation of astrology, different parts of the astrological system, including the decans, were correlated to the human body and thus to health.22 Because of this influence, illness could be identified and treated by interpreting the chart. Ainsworth informs that astrologers would use the amulet practices of the decans to create specific amulets for affected body parts to facilitate healing.23
Magic
I have only looked at this aspect of astrology in a cursory way, but I want to touch on it because of its decanic roots. We can clearly see the origins of the magical side of astrological practice in the decanic-related amulet practices of the Egyptians and Greeks. This aspect of astrology then continued into subsequent periods, eventually making its way to the West.
The astrological magic path leading to the West went through Harran in what we now know as Turkey. After monotheism took root, paganism came under attack and Alexandria fell, paganism and the tradition of magic continued to thrive in Harran. Some point to the learned Sabians of Harran as key players in the preservation of the ancient astrological magic practices.24
The Picatrix, a book of magic spells from Harran, part of which includes the Sabian practices, found its way to Castile in Europe in 1256 and was translated. That kicked off the magical astrology tradition in Europe, which continued to thrive through the Renaissance,25 after which astrology fell out of favor.26
In more recent times, contemporary astrologers have resurrected the magic tradition in astrology.27 While, as we will see, in modern astrology the decans do not hold a prominent place, in contemporary magical astrology, they are central: the work is to make talismans according to astrological magic instructionals (like the Picatrix) that are written for specific decans.28
Tarot
I was surprised to learn that the roots of The Tarot are in the astrological decans. During Medieval times, when the light of astrology was taken up by and carried forward by the Arabs, they, like the Greeks before them, refined the decans to align with their cultural traditions. To align it with their monotheistic perspective, they re-framed the decans from representations of gods to “symbolic images of real-life situations”.29 Later, these images and the variations that followed were used to create The Tarot.30 I wanted to understand this relationship for myself, so have taken time to walk through it here.
Michaud explains that the cards in the tarot deck based on the decans are the ten cards for each of the four suits, minus the four aces. By subtracting the aces, we wind up with nine cards in each suit for a total of thirty-six cards. Each card corresponds to a specific decan according to its alignment with various astrological factors.31
The first alignment is with the astrological elements, with each suit being associated with one of the four astrological elements: fire, earth, air, or water. The elements with their associated suits are:
Fire → Wands
Earth → Pentacles
Air → Swords
Water → Cups
The second alignment is with the astrological modalities. The modalities are cardinal, fixed, and mutable. To associate each card with a modality, the nine cards in each suit are divided into three groups of three, with each group then assigned to a modality. The first three cards of each suit, excluding the aces (so cards II, III, IV) belong to the cardinal modality. The second three cards of each suit (V, VI, VII) belong to the fixed modality. The final three cards of each suit (VIII, IX, X) belong to the mutable modality. Thus, we have:
Cardinal → Cards II, III, IV
Fixed → Cards V, VI, VII
Mutable → Cards VIII, IX, X
Finally, the card numbers are assigned to the decans. Although there are thirty-six decans in total, each sign has only three: the first ten degrees of each sign make up its first decan; the second ten degrees make up its second decan; and the third ten degrees make up its third decan. With twelve signs of three decans each, we get thirty-six decans.
Knowing the decan anatomy of the signs, we can assign each card to a decan. Since each modality is assigned three cards, we can pair the first card for each modality (II, V, VIII) wjth the first decan, the second card for each modality (III, VI, IX) with the second decan, and the third card for each modality (IV, VII, X) with the third decan. That gives us the following:
Decan 1 → Cards II, V, VIII
Decan 2 → Cards III, VI, IX
Decan 3 → Cards IV, VII, X
Using this scheme, we can determine the sign and decan of any card. We start by determining the element. If we pull a card from the wands, we know from the suit that it belongs to the fire element. We can then look at its number to determine the sign and decan. Let’s say we pulled the Six of Wands. We’ve already established that the element is fire, so we know that the Six of Wands corresponds to one of the fire signs. To determine which fire sign, we zero in on the modality. Is it a cardinal, fixed, or mutable card?
We know from the above discussion that the first three cards of every element (II, III, IV) belong to the cardinal modality, the second three signs (V, VI, VII) belong to the fixed modality, and the final three signs (VIII, IX, X) belong to the mutable modality. Since six corresponds to the fixed modality, we know that the Six of Wands corresponds to the fixed fire sign. The fixed fire sign is Leo, so the Six of Wands corresponds to Leo.
The last step is to determine the decan. We do so by considering the card number one more time. When we look at the cards for the fixed signs (V, VI, VII), we see that six is the second number in the group. The second number of each corresponds to the second decan, so the Six of Wands corresponds to the second decan of Leo.
Modern Astrology
The astrology tradition continued in the West until the Enlightenment. During that time, it fell out of favor due to a shift to a more rational orientation to life.32 In the 19th century, it was picked back up but changed significantly from what it had been.33 There seem to have been two factors accounting for this change. The first is that the tradition, having been broken, had to be cobbled together from what pieces survived, leaving us with a disjointed astrology. This first reason is the one I was aware of. Based on it, I assumed that modern astrologers naturally relied on their modern psychological mindset to put the pieces together.34
But there was another factor. According to Michaud, the cultural times were not hospitable to astrologers. Practicing it, it seems, could land you in jail. For this reason, they had to find a way to practice their craft that would not put them in harm’s way. Alan Leo, who was a key figure in bringing astrology back, understood the times and went about restructuring it as a psychological discipline.35
Thus, there seems to have been a both/and reason for the modern framing of astrology in psychological terms: the need to piece it back together from incomplete information (and perhaps naturally ordering the pieces according to the modern mind’s psychological orientation); and the need to avoid persecution (and a more intentional choice to shift its focus for that purpose).
During this reframing, the conception of the decans fundamentally changed.36 By the time I first began learning astrology in the 1990s, they were mentioned as part of a larger system called the essential dignities and debilities. This system did not include images or retain any hints of its sacred roots. In practice, they did not seem to be used much, if at all.
In part 2, I will go over the essential dignities and debilities. Here, I will say briefly that this system provides a way for astrologers to evaluate the condition of each planet in a given chart. In Greek times, Michaud describes the planets as being seen as occupying different roles. In later Medieval times, they began to be used in a more quantitative way, with each dignity and debility assigned points.37 Based on my understanding, the strength of the planet in this quantitative approach was then determined by its total score.38
Given that we know the Greeks also saw the decans as god-like, we can say that in this change, we see in the evolution of the essential dignities a shift away from the sacred (qualitative) and towards the secular (quantitative). Interestingly, in more recent times, when it comes to the decans more generally, we are beginning to see a shift back to the more sacred. I talk about this shift in the next section.
The Decans and the Journey of Our Human Soul
Before proceeding, I want to emphasize that the ideas presented in this section are speculative, not fact.
The Evolving Conception of the Gods
The Greek conception of the daimon dates back to Socrates. Socrates experienced the daimon as a helpful inner guiding voice. His conception and experience of it contrasts with that of later Greeks who saw daimons as externalized entities39 that could either help them or hurt them.40
A similar shift happened with the Egyptians regarding the decans. They, too, initially saw these lesser gods from their cultural tradition as guiding beings. Through their path in the sky, they reminded them of the sacredness of birth, life, and death. They also understood them to guide souls in the afterlife.41
When we consider these shifts in how the Egyptians thought about the decans and the Greeks thought about the daimons, we see a similar distancing from a sacred connection. In both cases, this distancing happened over time as though they were sliding down through time away from their inherent sense of connection to the divine.
The Christian Fall
As I learned about these shifts, I initially got the sense of the fall as talked about in Christian religions, a story about a dramatic change in humanity's experience of connection with the Divine. That story led me to think about the yugas of the Indian tradition.
The Indian Yugas
The yugas, or ages, are vast stretches of time. There are four in total that are repeated twice and organized into a larger Yuga cycle. The names of the four component yugas, or ages, are the:42
Satya Yuga
Treta Yuga
Dwapara Yuga
Kali Yuga
The dates for the current cycle are as follows:
Descending
Satya Yuga → 11,500 B.C. - 6,700 B.C.
Treta Yuga → 6,700 B.C. - 3,100 B.C.
Dwapara Yuga → 3,100 B.C. - 700 B.C.
Kali Yuga → 700 B.C. - 500 A.D.
Ascending
Kali Yuga → 500 A.D. - 1,700 A.D.
Dwapara Yuga → 1,700 A.D. - (4,100 A.D.)
Treta Yuga → (4,100 A.D. - 7,700 A.D.)
Satya Yuga → (7,700 A.D. - 12,500 A.D.)
On the wheel below, we see the larger cycle divided into two equal halves, each half spanning 12,000 years.43 The larger cycle thus spans 24,000 years. The visual below is based on the graphic included in Radhika Cosley’s article.44
On the right half of the wheel, there is a slide down from the highest yuga (Satya Yuga) to the lowest yuga (Kali Yuga). On the left, there is a slide from the lowest state of evolution (Kali Yuga) to the highest (Satya Yuga). I am not sure how to think of this ascension and descension as it relates to our orientation to it, but here are three possibilities: 1) we are somewhere in the cycle of ascension and descension of time; 2) we are descending and ascending (instead of time); or 3) our descent and ascent creates our perception of time.45
Putting a Yuga Filter on the Fall
Applying the concept of the Yugas to the Christian fall, we can think of it as marking a milestone in the slide down the descending side of the Yuga cycle. As this devolutionary slide from higher to lower progressed, a point was reached in which humans definitively felt disconnected from the Divine. We can think of the Fall as depicting that moment.
Putting a Yuga Filter on the Egyptian and Greek Shift
The Yuga cycle also provides a way to think about the shift we see in the Egyptian and Greek experiences of the gods. When we look at the history of the decans covered in this article, we see that, as far as we know, they were first conceived and incorporated into daily and yearly practices in Egypt during the descending portion of the cycle. The available evidence dates them to the descending Dwapara age, though their origins may extend back before that time.46 During this period, the gods seem to have been seen as helpful guides.
As the cycle progressed downward, how the Egyptians understood the gods (and thus decans) changed. Now, they saw them as unpredictable beings who could help or harm. By the time the Greeks picked up the decans, the ages had transitioned from the Dwapara yuga to the Kali yuga. At the time of the handoff, the Greek’s conception of the gods (daimons) was similar to the Egyptian conception of their gods (decans), and it is suggested that the Greeks transferred their cultural conception to the decans.47
The Decans and the Descent and Ascent of Humanity
When I think about this history, I get the sense of the decans serving as a rope keeping us tethered to the higher ages as we descended into the lower ones. During this descent, as we inevitably lost touch with our inner sense of sacredness, our conception of and relationship with the decans changed. Yet, despite the decline, the rope remained tethered to its origin point and within our reach. To shift metaphors, we might think of the decans as a bridge between the ages of light on the one side, during which we feel connected with the Divine, and the ages of darkness on the other side, during which we feel estranged from the Divine.
Even more intriguing, Michaud postulates that the decans “may reflect something that is outside of fate”.48 Exploring this concept could prove fruitful, something that is beyond the scope of this article. But, briefly, what comes to mind for me is the astrological connection between fate and time as seen in the Saturn archetype. (Saturn governs karma, which ties together both fate and time.) If the decans fall outside of time, then perhaps, in some mysterious way, they serve as a thread or line or rope keeping us connected on some level during darker times to that which is beyond fate and time, to our inherent oneness with the Divine.
Currently, we are in the early part of the left or ascending part of the cycle, having reached the nadir in about 500 A.D. In the 1700s, we rose out of the Kali Yuga into the Dwapara Yuga. At that time, astrology fell out of favor. When modern astrologers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began resurrecting astrology from the ashes, the decans were all but forgotten. When I first started learning astrology in the 1990s, the decans were mentioned but generally not used in the modern version I learned.
But, it seems that the rope was still within reach. Since I first began learning astrology, the essential dignities system, of which the decans are a part, has been fully restored and incorporated by traditional astrologers based on what translators have learned about it. More recently, astrologers have begun practicing the astrological magic practices of the past.
If I have this adoption sequence right, it is as though the decans are showing us the step-by-step evolution, or ascension, of the human Soul back toward the sacred. As the yugas continue to unfold in the ascending half of the cycle, we may find ourselves feeling more and more at one with the sacred and experiencing it as a beneficent force in our lives.
We Are Where We Are - And That’s OK
One thing that has come out of this speculative journey for me has been the insight that, when it comes to our evolution, we are where we are. It is not wrong, or bad, or less than to feel or be estranged from Source. It is simply a part of the cycle of evolution. Our work, always, is to do the work of where we are, work that is difficult to do if we are constantly judging ourselves (or being judged) for being where we are.
Regarding astrology more broadly, this exploration has resolved residual inner conflicts that have remained in me due to the disparity between my experience of astrology as valuable and two other things: 1) society’s general disparagement of astrology and 2) the spiritual perspective that astrology is unnecessary and inferior to a direct connection. The fact - the reality - is that we are where we are in the Yuga cycle. And it is OK to be where we are.
Our modern-day society is based on a limited, quantitative, material understanding of reality. It is not going to be able to embrace an esoteric discipline like astrology. That does not make astrology inferior. Because I now have the big-picture perspective to put it all in perspective and see things for what they are, I finally get that.
On the spiritual side, astrology is a tool that helps us connect to our inner truth. I agree that, when we are inwardly connected, we don’t need it as we are all guided from within. But I also now see that esoteric tools like astrology can help us during darker times. We don’t need to bash the tools or our need for them. Using them and learning from them doesn’t make us inferior or less than or fools. We can graciously accept them as the gifts they are, given to us to help us where we are - in the dark - whenever we need them to find our way back to ourselves.
Conclusion
Having looked at the history of the decans from Egypt to Greece to modern times and at a speculative idea about their possible connection to the journey of the human Soul, we will shift our focus in part 2. In that article, we’ll look at the essential dignities and debilities, a system into which the decans were incorporated and which traditional astrologers use today.
We’ll also look more closely at the two primary rulership systems that modern tropical astrologers use. Within that, I’ll share the experimental rulership system I am trialing that came out of the breakthrough I mentioned at the start of the article.
New Astrology Chart Design
The chart below is a new “Cosmic Fire” design for my astrology charts. I plan to use it as a template for an astrology program. I included the first version of this chart in my article on the Virgo Lunar Eclipse on Astrology Journal.
Other than some tweaking of the design to improve its visual harmony, I have updated the decan wheel - the inner wheel that looks like a string of colored beads encircling the house wheel. In addition to the two primary planetary rulership schemes for the decans, this wheel now includes the decan rulership scheme with which I am experimenting as one of the options to choose from. This option is the one shown in the chart below. In part 2, I will talk about this scheme along with the two established systems.
Cover Image Credit
References
Ainsworth, Theresa. "A Timeline of the Decans: From Egyptian Astronomical Timekeeping to Greco-Roman Melothesia." Master's thesis, Queen's University, 2018. https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/83acf792-37ff-4142-b96c-911beb7e80f1/content.
Brennan, Chris. "The History of Astrology: From Ancient to Modern Times." YouTube video, 2:40:49. Posted by "The Astrology Podcast," November 28, 2020.
Brennan, Chris. "Marcus Manilius - the Hellenistic Astrology Website." The Hellenistic Astrology Website, January 2, 2016. https://www.hellenisticastrology.com/astrologers/marcus-manilius/.
Burk, Kevin. Astrology: Understanding the Birth Chart. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2001.
Cosley, Radhika. "The 4 Yugas." Ananda (blog), December 6, 2023. https://www.ananda.org/blog/age-energy-intro-yugas/.
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Kamrin, Janice. "Telling Time in Ancient Egypt." The Met, February 2017. https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/telling-time-in-ancient-egypt
Mark, Joshua J., and David Moran. "First Intermediate Period of Egypt." World History Encyclopedia, September 30, 2016. https://www.worldhistory.org/First_Intermediate_Period_of_Egypt/.
Michaud, Spencer. "Face off!: Incorporating the Decans Into Your Astrological Practice." YouTube video, 2:35:04. Posted by "Spencer Michaud Astrology," July 23, 2021.
Revika. "Socrates and the Daimon." The Daemon Page, n.d. https://daemonpage.com/socrates-daimon.php.
Warnock, Christopher. "Astrological Magic: Resources for Authentic Medieval & Renaissance Magic of the Stars & Planets." Renaissance Astrology, n.d. https://www.renaissanceastrology.com/astrologicalmagic.html.
Wikipedia contributors. "Decan." Wikipedia, August 29, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decan.
Notes
See “Decans”. Also see Brennan (2016).
See “Decan.”
See Ainsworth, p. 1.
See Ainsworth, pp. 1, 4, 15-16. For the reference to tracking time, see p. 1. For the reference to the decans being relevant to religious rituals, see p. 4. For the reference to the decans' primary use being religious rather than timekeeping, see pp. 15-16. For the reference to the decans being used to guide souls in the afterlife, see p. 16.
See Ainsworth, p. 16.
See Ainsworth, p. 16.
See Ainsworth, pp. 2-3.
See Ainsworth p. 2.
See Ainsworth, pp. 2-3.
See Ainsworth (p.2) for the reference to 12-hour nights. Also see Kamrin for the reference to the 24-hour days (i.e., day and night together).
See Ainsworth, p. 2.
See Ainsworth, p. 15.
See Ainsworth, p. 15.
See Wikipedia contributors.
Ainsworth, pp. 30-1.
See Ainsworth, pp. ii, 1. Also see Brennan (2020, timestamp: 0:24:23 - 00:27:45).
See Ainsworth, pp. ii, 1. Also see Brennan (2020, timestamp 0:24:23 - 00:27:45).
See Ainsworth, p. 31.
See Ainsworth, p. 31.
See Michaud, timestamp: 0:39:15 - 0:39:42 . Michaud also briefly covers the decans in Vedic astrology so his talk could be a good starting point for further exploration on that front (see timestamp: 0:41:30 - 00:46:06).
See Ainsworth, pp. ii, 1, 32-39.
See Ainsworth, pp. ii, 1, 37-38. For the references to the decans, specifically, see pp. 1 and 37-38.
See Ainsworth, pp. ii, 1, 35-39.
Christopher Warnock, an astrologer who translated the Picatrix together with John Michael Greer, states: “The height of astrological magic in terms of complexity of technique appears to have culminated with the Sabians of Harran. Renowned as scientists, philosophers, astrologers and magicians, they preserved the knowledge of pagan antiquity into the medieval period.” (See Warnock.)
See Warnock.
See Michaud, timestamp: 1:23:27 - 1:25:11.
Warnock notes that his studying, teaching, practicing of astrological magic, and eventual translation of the Picatrix (together with Greer) led to others doing more work in bringing the practice back. See Warnock.
See Michaud, timestamp: 0:53:31- 0:57:55. In this clip, Michaud talks about the Picatrix (an instructional), then walks through the rules of the practice and provides an example.
See Michaud, timestamp: 0:46:40 - 0:47:01.
See Michaud, timestamps: 1:21:52 - 1:23:25 and 1:29:47 - 1:30:26. In the first clip, Michaud reads the description of an image and then shows the relevant tarot card. In the second clip, he talks about the origin of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck in the decans.
See Michaud., 1:32:08 - 1:33:29. This citation also applies to the rest of the section where I go over the details of how the tarot cards correspond to the decans.
See Michaud, timestamp: 1:23:27 - 1:25:11.
See Michaud, timestamps: 1:26:47 - 1:28:42 and 1:27:48 - 1:28:11. In the second clip, he talks about how the decans were changed.
Michaud also mentions the cultural influence. (See Michaud, timestamp: 1:28:43 - 1:28:47.)
See Michaud, timestamp: 1:28:00 - 1:28:41.
See Michaud, timestamp: 1:27:48 - 1:28:00.
See Michaud, timestamp: 1:17:22- 1:18:26.
The idea that the strength of the planets was determined by their score comes from my memory of what Burk presents in his book on the essential dignities and debilities, a book I read many years ago. (See Burk.)
See Revika.
See Ainsworth, p. 31.
See Ainsworth, pp. 2, 16.
See Cosley. This citation includes the list of names and dates that follow. For the final date (the ending of the ascending Satya Yuga), which Cosley didn’t specify, I calculated it to be 12,500 A.D.
In the original version, I had mistakenly written 12,500 years for the duration of each half of the Yuga cycle. I corrected that to 12,000.
See Cosley.
See Cosley. I am not entirely clear if, in the Yuga Cycle, time itself is conceived of as moving or we are. (Another option new to this version of the article is the possibility that our ascension and descension creates the perception of time.) For the purposes of the argument I am making, it does not matter which way it works as each gives the idea of descending away from or ascending up towards the highest evolutionary age.
Ainsworth states that the earliest extant evidence for the decans dates back to the First Intermediate period in ancient Egyptian times. She also notes, however, that the decans may predate this earliest existing evidence (see Ainsworth, p. 2). According to World History Encyclopedia, the First Intermediate Period spanned from 2,181 B.C.E. - 2,040 B.C.E. (see Mark and Moran). We know from Cosley's article that the descending Dwapara Yuga was from 3,100 B.C.E - 700 B.C.E. (see Cosley). Thus, the First Intermediate Period fell well within the Dwapara age. Whether or not the decans extend back before the Dwapara Yuga is not known.
See Ainsworth, p. 31.
See Michaud, timestamps: 1:19:13 - 1:20:28 and 1:19:50 - 1:19:58. The first clip provides the full context for Michaud’s idea about the decans’ relationship with fate. In the second clip, Michaud talks about the specific idea.