The third decan of Aries

The closing ten degrees of Aries, where the drive starts asking what it is for, and where the two rulership traditions part company.

The technical picture

Degrees: 20 to 30 degrees of Aries
Sun here roughly: April 9 to April 19. The boundary shifts by about a day with the leap cycle, so a birthday within a day of either end needs a calculated chart.
Sign ruler: Mars, over all three decans
Traditional face ruler: Venus, from the Chaldean order
Modern triplicity ruler: Jupiter, by way of Sagittarius
Do they agree: No. The two traditions disagree here, as they do on twenty-seven of the thirty-six decans.

The core of this decan

By twenty degrees of Aries the pure impulse has run most of its length and something else is arriving. Planets here want a reason. The action is still fast, but it is aimed at something larger than the immediate target, and people with placements here often describe a restlessness that is not satisfied by activity alone. A cause suits this decan better than a task.

How it differs from the rest of the sign

The first decan of Aries begins things for the pleasure of beginning. This one begins things it believes in, which is a different animal, and it is harder to stop. The second decan wants the act to be seen; the third wants it to be worth something. It also sits at the end of a sign, which traditionally carries a quality of summing up. The energy has been through the whole of Aries by the time it reaches these degrees, and it shows.

The two rulers

Here the traditions disagree, as they do on twenty-seven of the thirty-six decans. The old face system gives these degrees to Venus, continuing the Chaldean count. The modern scheme gives them to Jupiter, because the third decan of a fire sign takes the last fire sign, Sagittarius. The two readings are different rather than contradictory. Venus adds appetite and a certain grace to the fight, and Jupiter adds scale and conviction, and most charts with something here show a little of both.

Where the friction is

Conviction moves faster than evidence. A planet in this decan can commit to a cause at Aries speed and find out later that the cause did not hold, and the disappointment lands harder than it would on somebody who had committed less. There is also a tendency to mistake the size of a belief for its soundness. The energy that makes this decan inspiring is the same energy that makes it slow to notice it has backed the wrong thing.

Working with it

Give it something worth the conviction, and check the something before the conviction sets. One question does most of the work. What would have to be true for this to be a mistake? A planet in these degrees will not naturally ask it. And when a cause does turn out to be hollow, the useful move is to let it go early, since this decan will otherwise defend it long past the point of usefulness.

Questions to sit with

What would have to be true for the thing you are committed to to be a mistake?
Which cause are you still defending mostly because you already committed to it?
Is the size of your belief telling you anything about whether it is right?

The other decans of Aries

The rulers involved

Start here

Find which decan your own planets fall in.

Educational and reflective. This describes tendencies, not predictions, and is not medical, legal, financial, or psychological advice.

Drafted from an expert brief, reviewed by a practising astrologer with 30 years of experience, and grounded in computed chart data.