First Decan of Aries (0°–10°)

Mars twice over at the start of the wheel

The first decan of Aries runs from 0° to 10° of the sign, the degrees the Sun crosses in the days after the March equinox. It is the first face of the whole zodiac. The Chaldean order hands out the thirty-six faces in the planetary sequence Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, and its count begins here, with Mars. The triplicity scheme gives each face to a sign of the same element, and it gives the first face of Aries to Aries itself, so to Mars again. Only a few faces have one planet on both counts, and this is the first of them.

A planet in the face it rules holds a minor dignity. Mars here holds the major one as well, since Aries is its day house. Any planet placed in these ten degrees therefore works inside Mars's own territory, and it takes on Mars's habits: haste, directness, a readiness to make the first move. Cardinal fire supplies the impulse to begin, and this decan supplies it with no second voice to slow it down. The later faces of Aries add the Sun and then Venus. This one is the sign before anything has been added to it.

The axe-bearer in the white robe

The Picatrix, the Arabic handbook of astral magic that reached Latin readers in thirteenth-century Castile, pictures the first face of Aries as a dark, tall, powerfully built man with red eyes, a white cloth bound round his waist, angry, holding an axe. Agrippa keeps the figure in the second book of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) and lists what the image confers: boldness, strength, pride and shamelessness. That last quality matters. This face does not ask permission, and it does not much care how it looks while it acts.

The axe is the decan's best emblem. It clears scrub, splits a log, breaks down a door, and every cut it makes is final. The Golden Dawn title for the decan's card, Lord of Dominion, says what the clearing is for: ground claimed and held by whoever cleared it. Austin Coppock and T. Susan Chang are the modern authors who brought the decan images back into working astrology; the description here follows the medieval sources.

From the night clock to the first face

Before they were faces of signs, the decans were stars. Egyptian coffin lids from about 2100 BCE carry tables of thirty-six stars and star groups whose risings marked the hours of the night, each one taking its turn for about ten days of the year. Egypt's own sequence was led by Sothis, our Sirius, whose return in midsummer opened the year.

When the Babylonian zodiac reached Hellenistic Egypt, the thirty-six were fitted under the twelve signs, three to each, and the count was moved to start at the first point of Aries. That shift is why a face of Mars, not the star of the flood season, now opens the series. Which Egyptian star stood behind this particular face is not securely known, since the lists vary from monument to monument. The page on the Egyptian decan gods follows how those stars were pictured and honoured.

The Two of Wands, Lord of Dominion

In the Golden Dawn system the Two of Wands is Mars in Aries, the first decan of the first fire sign, and Book T titles it the Lord of Dominion. The suit gives fire, the number two gives the cardinal sign's opening face, and the planet is that face's Chaldean ruler. Two trumps stand behind it: The Tower for Mars and The Emperor for Aries.

Pamela Colman Smith painted a man on a castle wall holding a small globe, one wand in his hand and a second fixed to the stone beside him. He has already won the ground under his feet and is looking past it, out to sea. That is the decan as the card reads it. Force has done its work, the first claim is made, and the open question is where to push next. The card also notices what the axe leaves out: the figure on the wall stands there by himself.

A Sun or several planets in the first decan of Aries

If your Sun is here, you were born in roughly the first ten days after the March equinox, and the Aries reading applies to you at full strength. You tend to decide quickly and act on the decision while others are still weighing theirs. You would sooner build something with your own hands than inherit it, and you are often at your best on ground nobody has tried. Waiting tests you more than conflict does.

Several planets in this face push a whole chart toward initiative, and each of them answers to Mars on both counts. The shared risk is the axe turned on relationships: ending a friendship or a project in the heat of a dispute and only later counting the cost. The shared gift is courage that needs no audience. Because Mars rules everything placed here twice over, its own sign, house and aspects tell you how well this decan's energy is supplied.

Working with the first face of Aries

Give the energy a first step each day: one task started before the morning has been planned to death. Physical effort helps, especially anything with a clear start and finish, such as a sprint, a stack of wood to split or a short hard climb. Before you cut a tie, wait one night, because the axe will still be there in the morning. When you have cleared new ground, decide who you want standing on it with you, since the Two of Wands shows how easily the one who claims it ends up alone on the wall. In your own chart, check Mars first.