Tarot Cards and Zodiac Signs: Every Card's Sign, Planet and Decan

Tarot cards and zodiac signs are linked by a table of correspondences drawn up in the 1880s and 1890s by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an English occult society. Arthur Waite was a member, so the 1909 Waite deck is built on the same table. Every one of the 78 cards has an astrological address: 12 major arcana match the signs, 7 match the planets, 3 match the elements, and the minor arcana from Two to Ten share the 36 decans of the zodiac.

All the correspondences are below in three tables: signs, planets and elements. After them you'll find what decans are and how to use the correspondences in a reading.

Tarot cards and zodiac signs: the major arcana

Each sign has one major arcanum and three minor cards, one for every 10 degrees of the sign. The decan dates are averages: the Sun doesn't enter a sign on the same day every year, and the difference can be a day.

Many of these links are drawn right on the Waite cards. The Emperor's throne is carved with ram heads, the sign of Aries. Strength is taming a lion. The Lovers show two people, and the card belongs to Gemini.

Tarot cards and the planets

The seven classical planets, the ones you can see without a telescope, each got a major arcanum. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered later and aren't part of the Golden Dawn system. Modern authors gave them to the three "element" cards: The Fool, The Hanged Man and Judgement. The table marks them as a modern addition.

Suits and elements

Each suit matches an element, and the Ace is its purest form. Signs of the same element live in the same suit: the decans of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius are all Wands.

In the Golden Dawn, The World is Saturn's card and also carries Earth as its second attribution. That's why it sits in the Earth row.

Tarot decans: the minor arcana by 10 degrees

A decan is a third of a sign, 10 degrees of the zodiac. The division comes from Hellenistic astrology. Each decan is ruled by one of the seven planets in the Chaldean order: Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, and round again. The first decan of Aries goes to Mars.

That gives each minor card a double address. The Three of Wands is the Sun in Aries, roughly March 31 to April 10. Its meaning (first results, looking into the distance, waiting for the ships to come in) matches spring Aries, when the Sun is gaining strength.

The Aces sit above the decans: each one stands for its whole element.

The court cards also got 30-degree spans of the zodiac, but the boundaries differ between schools. The Golden Dawn names the courts differently from Waite (Knight, Queen, Prince, Princess), and authors disagree on how to carry those names over to the Waite deck. So they're left out of the tables.

How to use the correspondences in a reading

1. Add a second layer. You draw The Tower, which is Mars's card. Look at where Mars sits in your birth chart: its house hints at which part of life to check for a sudden change.
2. Find your sign's card. A Virgo Sun gives The Hermit, a Sagittarius Sun gives Temperance. If your sign's card keeps turning up, look at what you were asking about at the time.
3. Don't read the decan as a deadline. Decan dates track the Sun, and the event in your question keeps its own timing. Read the Three of Wands by the theme of spring Aries: what you started is bearing its first fruit, and it's time to look further ahead.

You can find your Sun, Moon and Ascendant in the free birth chart, along with the house of every planet.

Make my birth chart

There's another way to find "your" card, based on numerology instead of astrology: the sum of the digits of your birthday. It's explained in the tarot birth card calculator.