Decans Astrology: The 36 Faces, Older Than the Signs

Traditional

The decans are the oldest thing in this whole cluster and they are the smallest dignity in the scoring table. One point. Dead last.

They are also the only part of the system that predates the part it lives inside. The thirty six decans were Egyptian markers tied to specific fixed stars before they were subdivisions of signs at all. They were out there in the sky doing their job while the twelve signs were still being assembled. Then the Hellenistic period arrived, tidied them into ten degree slices, and filed them under "worth one point."

Cut every sign into three equal pieces of ten degrees each. That gives thirty six segments around the zodiac, and each one has a ruling planet. In the traditional system this is the smallest of the five essential dignities.

The word "decan" comes from the Egyptian tradition and the word "face" from the Greek prosopon, which also means mask, visage or countenance. Brennan connects that name to the elaborate figure illustrations that accompanied the decans in some manuscripts.

Where They Came From

The decans were inherited from the earlier Egyptian astrological tradition, where each of the thirty six was associated with specific fixed stars or asterisms rather than with a slice of a sign. They were observational markers tied to particular stars in the sky.

In the Hellenistic period they were absorbed into the zodiac and became ten degree subdivisions of the signs instead. Brennan's judgement is that once that shift happened they largely ceased to be connected with the earlier Egyptian tradition, and that it is unclear whether the continued use of the old Egyptian names is more than vestigial.

Those names did survive in the texts. Hephaistio attributes specific Egyptian names to each decan, giving the three decans of Cancer as Sothis, Sit and Chnoumis (Apotelesmatika, 1, 1: 69). These accord with names recorded in ancient Egyptian temples, although Neugebauer and Parker note that Hephaistio appears to have conflated two different naming schemes.

So the thirty six units are older than the twelve signs they now sit inside, and the mapping of one onto the other was a Hellenistic act of tidying up.

Three Competing Decan Systems, Not One

The tradition does not carry a single decan doctrine. Brennan names three, and they coexisted.

The Egyptian names, as in Hephaistio, tying each decan to its stellar identity.
Figures and images. The Liber Hermetis, chapter 1, preserves descriptions of each decan as a pictured figure. The first decan of Aries is an armed upright walking figure holding a double sided battle axe overhead (Liber Hermetis, 1: 4). Nobody writes about this layer anymore and it is the most vivid thing in the material.
Planetary rulers in Chaldean order, which is the system that eventually won.

The Chaldean Order Rulers, And The 36

The ruler system appears around the first century CE with Teucer of Babylon. The rule that generates it is short.

The first decan of Aries takes the domicile lord of Aries, which is Mars. Every following decan takes the next planet in descending Chaldean order, which runs Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, then repeats. The sequence runs continuously through the zodiac without restarting at each sign.

The approach is outlined in Paulus, Introduction, 4, who calls the planetary sequence the "seven zone system" rather than Chaldean order. Macrobius, writing in the fifth century, calls it "the Chaldean system" (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 1, 19: 2). The same order is sometimes called Ptolemaic order in contemporary discussion.

Applying that rule gives all thirty six.

Sign	0 to 10 degrees	10 to 20 degrees	20 to 30 degrees
Aries	Mars	Sun	Venus
Taurus	Mercury	Moon	Saturn
Gemini	Jupiter	Mars	Sun
Cancer	Venus	Mercury	Moon
Leo	Saturn	Jupiter	Mars
Virgo	Sun	Venus	Mercury
Libra	Moon	Saturn	Jupiter
Scorpio	Mars	Sun	Venus
Sagittarius	Mercury	Moon	Saturn
Capricorn	Jupiter	Mars	Sun
Aquarius	Venus	Mercury	Moon
Pisces	Saturn	Jupiter	Mars

Two checks confirm the table. Brennan states the opening of it in words, giving Aries as Mars, Sun, Venus and Taurus as Mercury, Moon, Saturn. And Porphyry works Aries in delineation.

Three People Out Of One Sign

Porphyry's worked example is the clearest surviving demonstration, and it makes his own point, which is that a single sign yields three different results (Introduction, 47).

The Sun at 10 Aries, first decan, the face of Mars: a spirit that is manly, irascible, fond of fighting and of weapons.
The Sun at 20 Aries, second decan, the face of the Sun: a bright spirited, ambitious, proud person not at all fond of fighting.
The Sun at 30 Aries, third decan, the face of Venus: a womanly spirit, feminine appearance, and lustfulness.

Three Aries Suns, three unrelated descriptions, and the only difference is ten degrees. Whatever you think of the delineations themselves, the structural argument is sound and it is aimed squarely at anyone reading a sign as a single block.

Beyond that, two uses are attested. The rising decan, the one containing the Ascendant, was used for general predictions about the native's life. And decans were used to describe physical appearance and marks on the body. Hephaistio's passage on the first decan of Virgo gives height, soul, face, eyes, nose and a mark on the bosom (Apotelesmatika, 1, 1: 109-111).

Brennan describes the decans overall as "occasionally employed" by the Hellenistic astrologers, and says they played a much reduced role compared with the signs in most of the later Hellenistic approaches. It is not clear how widespread the ruler system was in that period, and in some ways it competed with the other two approaches. It won by the Medieval tradition, when the decan or face became one of the five essential dignities.

The Traditional Face And The Modern Decan

The two words tend to get used interchangeably now, and the practices behind them are not the same. This matters more than it sounds like it does.

The traditional face is a rulership. It is the fifth essential dignity, worth one point in the Medieval and Renaissance scoring scheme, and it names a planet that has a small claim on that ten degree stretch. It is the weakest of the five, and the threshold it sets matters: a planet with a face and nothing else is still technically in dignity rather than peregrine.

Modern decan practice generally treats the three segments of a sign as three shadings of that sign's character, described qualitatively rather than as a rulership held by a planet. That usage is not documented in the traditional sources in this library, which give the decans only as star associations, as pictured figures and as the Chaldean order rulership. Chris Brennan points readers to Austin Coppock's 36 Faces as a modern synthesis, which is a recommendation rather than doctrine.

If you are computing dignity, you want the face in the traditional sense and the table above. If you are reading a decan for flavour, you are doing something the ancient texts do not describe. Both are allowed. They are not the same activity and it helps to know which one you are doing.

Two Things Not To Confuse With The Faces

Proper face, idioprosopia, is a separate doctrine that shares a name. A planet is in its proper face when it holds the same phase relationship to the Sun or Moon that it holds in the domicile assignments. Ptolemy's example structure: in the domicile scheme the Sun in Leo is configured to Venus in Libra by a sextile with Venus later in zodiacal order, so if the Sun were in Scorpio and Venus two signs later in Capricorn, Venus would be in its proper face (Tetrabiblos, 1, 23: 1; Rhetorius, Compendium, 54). Brennan warns that the two doctrines are genuinely confusable in the texts themselves, citing Valens, Anthology, 2, 5: 1 against 2, 6: 1. So if you mix them up, you are in company.

Ptolemy treats proper face as a favourable condition and otherwise never mentions the decans at all. Schmidt's explanation, which Brennan endorses, is that this follows from Ptolemy's use of the tropical zodiac, which would not be compatible with the older Egyptian associations between decans and fixed stars.

The leitourgoi are a further division of each decan into thirds, named "servitors" or "ministers," mentioned by Firmicus (Mathesis, 2, 4: 4-5) and Anubio (Carmen, F1: 10-14), and appearing in Hermetic material as the servants and soldiers of the decans. Their astrological use is left ambiguous, because no interpretive texts for them survive. A hundred and eight named subdivisions and not one surviving instruction for what to do with them.

What To Actually Go Do

Run Porphyry's test on yourself. Find your Sun's degree, work out which of the three decans of its sign it sits in, and read the ruler off the table. Then look at the other two rulers of that sign, the ones you missed by a few degrees.

Those are the two other versions of your Sun sign that the tradition would have described completely differently. If you have ever felt that the standard write up of your sign was describing somebody else, this is one of the mechanisms that explains why.

Then check the practical use: does any planet in your chart hold a face and nothing else? If so, that planet is not peregrine, on Doser's threshold, by exactly one point. The smallest dignity in the system is the one keeping it in the door.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Decans Are There?

Thirty six. Twelve signs at three decans each, ten degrees per decan.

How Do I Find My Decan Ruler?

Take the degree of the planet or point, decide whether it falls in the first, second or third ten degrees of its sign, then read the ruler off the table above.

Are Decans And Faces The Same Thing?

They name the same ten degree divisions. "Decan" carries the Egyptian and stellar history, "face" is the Greek prosopon and is the word used when the division is functioning as an essential dignity. Proper face, idioprosopia, is a different doctrine entirely.

Are The Decans Older Than The Zodiac Signs?

The thirty six decans were Egyptian markers tied to fixed stars before they were subdivisions of signs. The Hellenistic tradition absorbed them and redefined them as ten degree slices.

How Much Weight Does A Face Carry?

One point in the Medieval scoring scheme, the least of the five essential dignities. Its practical significance is as a threshold: it is enough to keep a planet from being peregrine.

Why Does The Decan Ruler Sequence Not Restart In Each Sign?

Because the Chaldean order runs continuously from the first decan of Aries onward. Thirty six is not a multiple of seven, so the cycle never lines up with the signs, which is why Aries and Scorpio share the same three rulers and no two adjacent signs do.

Continue Learning

Next: essential dignities in astrology and planetary bounds and terms.

Topics covered

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Decans and Faces, or the 36 That Existed Before the Signs Did