Decans

The 36 Zodiac DecansDates for 2026 and the Ruler of Each Face

Every sign holds three decans of ten degrees each. This page lists all 36 with the dates the Sun spends in them and sets the two common ruler systems side by side, so you can see where they agree and where they part.

Editorial guideStatic articleUpdated 2026-09-29

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Visual guide

How to read the table

The table gives, for each of the 36 decans, the dates on which the Sun is in it in 2026 and the planet that rules it in each of the two systems explained below. A date counts as belonging to the decan the Sun occupies at 12:00 UTC on that day, and the exact minute of every sign change is in the zodiac sign dates guide. In another year a boundary can move by a day, so the date column describes the Sun only. Any other planet, and the Ascendant, is placed by its own zodiac degree and not by a date.

All 36 decans, with the Sun’s dates in 2026 and both rulers

Each row is one ten-degree face of the zodiac: its sign and number with the degrees it covers, the dates the Sun is in it, and its ruler in each of the two systems explained below.

The Chaldean ruler system

This system names the planets in the Chaldean order, from the slowest to the fastest as seen from Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The first decan of Aries goes to Mars, and the planets then follow in that order, one to each decan, round and round the whole zodiac. Thirty-six is not a multiple of seven, so the sequence does not close neatly. It runs through five full cycles with one decan over, which means Mars rules both the last decan of Pisces and the first decan of Aries. The Chaldean column of the table was built from that rule and not typed in.

The triplicity ruler system

Here each sign’s three decans are given to the three signs of its own element, starting with the sign itself. Aries, a fire sign, has the decans of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, ruled in turn by Mars, the Sun and Jupiter. The water signs run through Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, the earth signs through Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn and the air signs through Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. The table uses the traditional seven planets as sign rulers so that the two systems compare like with like. Many modern lists give Pluto, Uranus and Neptune to Scorpio, Aquarius and Pisces, and where they do, those decans carry a modern name beside the traditional one.

Where the two systems agree

The two systems name the same planet for nine of the 36 decans: the first and second decans of Aries, the third decan of Taurus, the second and third decans of Leo, the second decan of Libra, the first decan of Scorpio, the second decan of Aquarius and the third decan of Pisces. For the other 27 they differ. The first decan of Leo is Saturn’s in the Chaldean system and the Sun’s by triplicity. Neither is the single correct answer. They are separate traditions, and a reading should name the table it uses and keep to it, as the decan definition page also advises.

Why the dates are only a guide

A decan is ten degrees of longitude, not ten days. The Sun moves fastest in winter and slowest in summer, so in 2026 it spends 9.81 days in the second decan of Capricorn and 10.49 days in the second decan of Cancer. A leap day and the time zone move each boundary by up to a day between years. A birth close to a boundary cannot be sorted by date alone. It needs the Sun’s degree at the birth moment, which the birth chart gives.

Where the decans came from

The earliest decans were not zodiac divisions at all. They were groups of stars in Egypt whose risings marked stretches of the night, and they appear on coffin lids and astronomical ceilings. The word decan comes from the Greek for ten. When astrology developed in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean, a scheme of thirty-six ten-degree faces was joined to the twelve signs and to planetary rulership. The personality descriptions of a first, second and third decan that circulate today are later still, and they should not be read back into the Egyptian material.

Reading a decan without over-reading it

A decan can add a shade of tone to a placement, and some astrologers use the face ruler as a minor dignity. It cannot establish character from a birthday alone. If a planet sits within a fraction of a degree of 10 or 20 degrees, use its unrounded longitude before choosing a decan, because 10°00′ begins the second decan and does not end the first. Astrology is a symbolic tradition and not a validated way to predict personality or events, so treat a decan as one more question to ask of a chart.

Concrete examples

Related Almanac guides

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Sources and editorial method

Research and editorial references used for this page include:

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Decan - Historical overview of Egyptian decans and their astronomical role.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Egyptian Astronomical Texts - Museum context for ancient Egyptian astronomical and calendrical traditions.
• Astrodienst Astrowiki: Ruler - Classical and modern planetary rulerships of the signs.
• Swiss Ephemeris programmer documentation - The positions behind the date column.
• The Almanac’s calculation and interpretation method

The date column comes from the minute the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches each tenth degree, solved on the Swiss Ephemeris and checked against a second ephemeris, then assigned to calendar days by the Sun’s position at 12:00 UTC. The rulers are derived from the two rules stated on this page, the Chaldean order starting with Mars at the first decan of Aries and the same-element sign order with the traditional rulers, and were compared with the standard printed tables. Where sources differ, the differences are named and not resolved. This page does not claim that a decan predicts character.

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