The Court Cards' Planetary and Decan Scheme

The question this part asks

The golden dawn court cards question for this part is the narrowest in the series, and the most concrete. Why do the court cards carry decans at all, and where does that astrological layer first appear in the Order's documents? The previous part was about the text. This part is about the system the text carries, and the system is the astrology that sits on the court cards.

The series' thesis is that the Thoth deck's letter, planetary and decan system is a nineteenth-century and twentieth-century reconstruction. This part tests the part of that system that is easiest to verify, because it is the most structured: the decans. A decan is a unit of astrology, and a unit of astrology has a date and a source. If the decans on the court cards are an ancient inheritance, they should be traceable to an old source. They are not. They are the Golden Dawn's, and the Golden Dawn's decans are a choice.

What a decan is

A decan is a unit of the zodiac. The zodiac has twelve signs, and each sign is 30 degrees. Each 30-degree sign is divided into three parts of ten degrees each, and each of those parts is a decan. So the zodiac has thirty decans, and the thirty decans are the raw material of the system this part is about.

The court cards are the place the decans go. The court of a suit is four cards, and in the Golden Dawn's system the four court cards of a suit are the King, the Queen, the Knight and the Page. The decans are assigned to these cards, and the assignment is the astrological layer that sits on the court. The card is not the decan. The decan is a unit of the zodiac, and the card carries it. That is the structure, and the structure is the point.

The golden dawn court cards and the four ranks

The court has four ranks, and the four ranks are the unit. The King, the Queen, the Knight and the Page are not four separate cards. They are one court, and the court is the place the astrology goes. The King is the highest rank, the Queen the second, the Knight the third, and the Page the fourth. The order is the deck's order, and the order is the Order's, and the Order is the source of the order.

The four ranks are a fixed hierarchy, and the hierarchy is the unit the astrology is built on. The King above the Queen, the Queen above the Knight, the Knight above the Page. The stack of four is the court, and the astrology sits on the stack. A deck without a fixed order of the four could not carry the system, because the system depends on the rank being fixed.

Each rank carries a different part of the system. The King carries the planetary ruling in its most complete form. The Queen carries the same ruling in its receptive form. The Knight carries the motion, the active part of the ruling. The Page carries the beginning, the learning form. The four ranks are the same ruling read in four states, and the four states are the Order's reading, not an ancient one.

The decan layer first appears in the Order's documents in the form it was written down in the late nineteenth century. The earliest printed form is the 1912 Equinox text, the paper that carried the tarot chapter into the public record. In that text, the court cards already carry the decan assignments, and the assignments are the Order's.

That is the date. The decan layer is not older than the Order. It is the Order's. Before the Order, the tarot had no decans. The Marseille pattern has court cards, but the court cards have no decans. The decans arrived with the Order, and the Order is the source. The Thoth deck's decans are the Order's decans, carried down through Regardie, and the line runs from the Order to Regardie to the deck.

Why thirty, not twenty-two

The number is the tell. The trumps are twenty-two, and the decans are thirty. The two numbers are different, and the difference is the argument. If the decans were an ancient inheritance built into the deck, they would fit the deck's own number. They do not. The deck has twenty-two trumps and fifty-six minor arcana, and the decans are thirty. The thirty is the zodiac's number, and the zodiac is the source of the thirty.

The court cards carry the decans because the court cards are the place the zodiac is put. The zodiac has thirty decans, and the court has to hold them. The court of four cards, across four suits, gives sixteen court cards, and the sixteen hold a selection of the thirty. The number sixteen is the deck's number for the court, and the thirty is the zodiac's number for the decans. The two numbers do not match, and the mismatch is the evidence that the decans are a layer, not a foundation.

The planetary layer under the decans

The decans sit on a planetary layer, and the planetary layer is older in the Order's documents than the decan layer. The court cards carry planets, and the planets carry the decans. The assignment is a stack: the suit gives the element, the planet gives the ruling, and the decan gives the zodiacal part. The three layers are the system, and the system is the Order's.

The planetary layer is the bridge between the deck and the astrology. A court card is not just a card. It is a card with a planet, and the planet has a decan, and the decan has a degree in the zodiac. The stack is the attribution, and the attribution is a choice made in the Order's documents. The Thoth deck inherits the stack, and the stack is the line from the Order to Regardie to the deck.

The stack is why the court reads the way it does. When a reader asks what a King means, the answer is not an image. The answer is a planet, a decan, and a degree. The image is the deck's drawing of the stack. The stack is the Order's system. The court card is the system made visible, and the system is the line from the Order to Regardie to the deck.

Why the scheme is a choice

The scheme is a choice because it could have been made another way. The Order could have assigned the decans to the number cards, not the court. It could have used the zodiac's thirty as the deck's thirty, and made a deck of thirty court cards. It did not. It made a deck of sixteen court cards and put a selection of the zodiac's thirty on them. The choice is the court's choice, and the court is the Order.

The choice is visible in the documents. The 1912 Equinox text shows the assignment, and the assignment is the Order's. Regardie's redaction shows the same assignment with the same choices, and the choices are not corrected, they are carried. The modern deck shows the same assignment, and the same choices, and the choices are the line. The line is the choice, and the choice is the Order's.

That is the test this part was meant to run. The most structured part of the system, the part with the cleanest numbers, is the part that is most obviously a choice. If the least arbitrary layer is a choice, the whole system is a choice. The golden dawn court cards carry the decans because the Order put them there, and the putting is the choice, and the choice is the line.

What this gives the reader

A reader of the Thoth deck holds the decans as if they were ancient. They are not. They are the Order's, from the late nineteenth century, carried through Regardie to the deck. The decans are a layer, and the layer is a choice, and the choice is the line from the Order to Regardie to the deck.

That does not make the decans less real. A reading with decans is a reading, whether the decans are ancient or recent. But it makes them honest. The decan layer is the Order's, and the Order is the source, and the source is a date. The golden dawn court cards carry the decans because the Order put them there, and the putting is the choice, and the choice is the line.

For the three printings that carry the system, see the article on Book T and its three printings. Book T and Its Three Printings For the decans and the minor arcana, see the article on Picatrix and the decans. Picatrix and the Decans: Where the Minor Arcana's Astrology Comes From For the letter system the court sits under, see the article on the twenty-two letters. Tarot and Kabbalah: How the 22 Trumps Became the Hebrew Letters

The sources are Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (1937), the 1912 Equinox text of the tarot paper, and the correspondence of the Order's tarot chapter at tarotologist.com.