☰ Cards, readings & spreads
Zodiac signs and their tarot cards
In the Golden Dawn system (Book T), your sign gets one Major Arcana trump through the Hebrew letters, three decan cards (Two to Ten of a suit, one per 10°), and a court card ruling from 20° of the previous sign to 20° of yours. The birth-date tool uses the Sun’s actual position that day to identify your sign, decan, and cards, settling boundary days a date list cannot. Traditional tropical-zodiac dates can differ from the Sun’s boundary crossing by up to a day in a given year.
Find your cards by birthday
Enter a date of birth. The calculator finds where the Sun was that day and gives the card of the sign, of the decan, of the degree’s court figure and of the decan’s planet.
The twelve signs and their cards
One trump per sign, three numbered cards for its decans and one court card. The dates are the traditional tropical-zodiac ones; in a given year the Sun can cross a boundary a day earlier or later.
All 36 decans by date
Each row is one third of a sign: its card, the planet Book T gives it and the traditional dates of the Sun's passage.
Planets and elements
The seven planets known to classical astrology and three of the four elements have trumps of their own. A planet's trump is read with the decans that planet rules; an element's trump with the suit of that element.
How the cards were assigned
The table comes from Book T, the Golden Dawn's tarot manuscript, printed in The Equinox in 1912; its decan titles are the ones in Aleister Crowley's 777. None of it rests on the pictures. It follows from four rules, so you can check any line by hand.
- Trumps through the Hebrew letters. Each of the 22 trumps stands on one letter. The three "mother" letters go to the elements (The Fool to Air, The Hanged Man to Water, Judgement to Fire), the seven "double" letters to the planets and the twelve "simple" letters to the signs in order, from The Emperor on Heh for Aries to The Moon on Qoph for Pisces.
- Decan cards by element, quality and planet. The suit follows the element of the sign, the number its quality: cardinal signs take 2–4, fixed signs 5–7, mutable signs 8–10. The planets follow one another in the Chaldean order, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, from 0° Aries round the whole zodiac. Thirty-six decans over seven planets leave Mars with six: the last decan of Pisces and the first of Aries.
- Court cards across the cusp. A Queen, King or Knight rules 30° from 20° of one sign to 20° of the next, which is why the Queen of Wands reaches back into Pisces. Queens take the cardinal signs, Kings the fixed signs, Knights the mutable signs.
- Aces and Pages stay outside the zodiac. Book T sets the Aces at the north pole of the heavens and gives each Page a quarter of the sky around it, above a fixed sign: they carry an element and no dates.
Where books disagree
- Kings and Knights. Book T's "Kings" are figures mounted on steeds and its "Princes" ride in chariots. Book T itself calls the mounted figure the Knight of each suit and the chariot figure its King; some writers swap the signs of the two, so the King of Wands turns up as Sagittarius rather than Leo.
- The Emperor and the Star. Crowley's Thoth deck exchanges their Hebrew letters, but each card keeps its sign.
- Strength and Justice. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck numbers Strength 8 and Justice 11, older decks the other way round. Strength is Leo and Justice is Libra under either numbering.
- Ruling planets. A list that gives Aries the Tower because Mars rules Aries is using a different method; this page follows the letters.
Checked by code against Book T (Mathers and Felkin's text), the decan titles of 777, Joy Vernon's and Auntie Moon's decan tables and the Totally Tarot transcription of the 1912 printing. The calculator's Sun positions are checked against the U.S. Naval Observatory's equinox and solstice times.
Tarot birth cards
A different method: the whole date of birth, year included, reduced to a Major Arcana pair.
The suits and their elements
Wands are Fire, Cups Water, Swords Air and Pentacles Earth: the element decides which signs a suit's cards belong to.
Questions
What tarot card is each zodiac sign?
In the Golden Dawn system: Aries, The Emperor; Taurus, The Hierophant; Gemini, The Lovers; Cancer, The Chariot; Leo, Strength; Virgo, The Hermit; Libra, Justice; Scorpio, Death; Sagittarius, Temperance; Capricorn, The Devil; Aquarius, The Star; Pisces, The Moon. Each sign also has three decan cards and a court card.
What are the decan cards in tarot?
Each sign is split into three decans of 10°, and each decan takes one numbered card from Two to Ten. The suit follows the element of the sign, and the number follows its quality: cardinal signs take the Two, Three and Four, fixed signs the Five, Six and Seven, mutable signs the Eight, Nine and Ten. Each decan also has a planet, in the order Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, counted on from 0° Aries.
Which court card is my zodiac sign?
In Book T each Queen, King and Knight rules from 20° of one sign to 20° of the next. The Queens take the cardinal signs, the Kings the fixed signs and the Knights the mutable signs, so the Queen of Wands is mainly Aries and the King of Swords mainly Aquarius. Pages and Aces have an element but no zodiac degrees.
Why do some sites give a different card for my sign?
Three reasons. Some lists use a sign's ruling planet instead of the Hebrew letter, which gives a different table. Some books swap the Kings and Knights, because the Golden Dawn's "King" is the mounted figure. And the Thoth deck exchanges the Emperor and the Star on the Tree of Life, though each keeps its sign: Aries is the Emperor and Aquarius the Star either way.
