Second Decan of Sagittarius (10°–20°)

The Moon's face in the middle of the archer's sign

The second decan of Sagittarius covers 10°–20° of the sign, the centre of mutable fire. In the Chaldean order the face belongs to the Moon. In the triplicity scheme, which passes each sign's three decans through the three signs of its element, the middle face of Sagittarius goes to Aries and so to Mars.

The two rulers pull the sign in different directions. The Moon has no classical dignity in Sagittarius, but as face lord it brings feeling, memory and the body into a sign that likes to live in its ideas. Mars, through Aries, adds heat and readiness to fight. What results is belief that is felt in the gut and defended with some force.

The first decan of Sagittarius sends the arrow. This one lives with what happens after: the road gets long, the weather turns, and faith has to survive contact with experience. Astrologers read it as the face of the pilgrim and the frontier guard, people whose convictions are not abstract because they have paid for them.

The veiled mourner and the Lord of Great Strength

Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, printed in 1533, gives this face a weeping woman wrapped in her clothes, and reads it as a face of sadness and of fear for one's own body. His images descend largely from the Picatrix, the Arabic handbook of astral magic translated into Latin in the thirteenth century, where each face's figure guided the making of talismans.

The image is a surprise in a fire sign known for its optimism, and it is the Moon speaking. Under the archer's confidence sits a body that remembers being hurt and a heart that wants cover. The Golden Dawn's Book T, from the 1890s, takes the same face in another direction and calls its card the Lord of Great Strength. The two images describe one person from two sides. Agrippa shows the grief under the armour, the Golden Dawn shows the armour still standing. Strength in this decan means staying at the post while afraid.

A ten-day star in the Egyptian night

Before the zodiac, the decans were thirty-six star groups whose dawn risings marked the ten-day weeks of the Egyptian calendar, while their risings through the night told the hours. Each was a god. Each disappeared from the sky for about seventy days a year, which the Book of Nut describes as a stay in the house of embalming before rebirth on the eastern horizon. Hellenistic astrologers fitted the thirty-six to the signs, three apiece, and this one became the middle of Sagittarius. The Egyptian lists differ from monument to monument, so no single star can be named for it with confidence. The idea of a star that goes into the dark and returns suits this face well. The Sun crosses it roughly from 2 to 11 December, in the deepening dark before the solstice.

The Nine of Wands: the Moon in Sagittarius

The Golden Dawn gave the Nine of Wands to this decan: Wands for fire, the Nine for the middle face of the mutable fire sign, and the Moon as its Chaldean ruler. In the Rider-Waite deck a man with a bandaged head leans on his staff and looks warily to one side. Eight more staves stand behind him like a palisade.

The Moon explains the bandage and the wary look. This is a figure who has been hurt and remembers it, which is why he guards so well. Sagittarius explains why he is still there: he believes in what lies behind the fence. In readings the card speaks of stamina near the end of a long effort, of defending a position, and of the cost of staying vigilant for too long. In the Golden Dawn's wider system it stands between The High Priestess, for the Moon, and Temperance, for Sagittarius. One keeps the inner memory and the other mixes opposites until they hold.

A Sun or planets in the second decan of Sagittarius

With the Sun here, born roughly between 2 and 11 December, your idealism tends to come from experience rather than theory. You may have had to fight for your beliefs early, or to rebuild them after a loss, and the ones you kept are the ones that held. You are loyal to people and causes, protective of those who depend on you, and slow to trust anyone who has not shown their colours.

The Moon as face lord makes this the most emotional part of Sagittarius. Moods matter, and so does the body: rest, food and a safe base decide how much fight you have. Mars through Aries gives you a temper when a principle is at stake, and real stamina.

Several planets in this decan give a chart a strong defensive streak and great endurance, often turned toward a cause, a faith or a community. The Moon placed here sits in its own face, which tradition counts as a minor dignity, and Mars here picks up the triplicity scheme's claim through Aries.

Working with the second decan of Sagittarius

Check, from time to time, whether the threat you are guarding against is still there. This decan keeps watch long after the danger has passed, and a short honest review frees energy for what comes next. Look after the body as you would look after a soldier on a long posting: sleep, warm food, a place that feels safe.

Name the beliefs you have earned through experience and write down how you came by them; it makes them easier to defend calmly and easier to revise when life teaches something new. Let one trusted person past the palisade. If you read the Tarot, lay out the Nine of Wands and ask which staff behind you is worth guarding and which you could set down. The days each December when the Sun crosses this face suit finishing a long effort rather than starting a fresh one.