Which Tarot Card Rules Your Star Sign?
Every zodiac sign carries one Major Arcana card, plus three numbered cards and a court card. Here is the full map, where it comes from, and how old it actually is.
The Golden Dawn system
Tarot and astrology
Every card in the deck carries an element, and most carry a sign or a planet as well. This is the whole map: which cards belong to each sign, which belong to each planet, and what the system is actually claiming.
The twelve signs
Five cards each: the trump, three decans and a court card.
- AriesCardinal FireThe Emperor21 March to 19 April
- TaurusFixed EarthThe Hierophant20 April to 20 May
- GeminiMutable AirThe Lovers21 May to 20 June
- CancerCardinal WaterThe Chariot21 June to 22 July
- LeoFixed FireStrength23 July to 22 August
- VirgoMutable EarthThe Hermit23 August to 22 September
- LibraCardinal AirJustice23 September to 22 October
- ScorpioFixed WaterDeath23 October to 21 November
- SagittariusMutable FireTemperance22 November to 21 December
- CapricornCardinal EarthThe Devil22 December to 19 January
- AquariusFixed AirThe Star20 January to 18 February
- PiscesMutable WaterThe Moon19 February to 20 March
The ten planets
The seven classical bodies carry a trump and a spread of numbered cards. The three modern ones carry a single trump each.
The four elements
The layer underneath the other two, and the one that does the most work in an actual reading. Elemental dignity between neighbouring cards is computed on every spread drawn here.
How the decans work
Each sign covers thirty degrees of the zodiac, divided into three ten-degree decans. The Golden Dawn assigned one numbered minor card to each decan, running Two through Ten of the suit that matches the sign’s element, in modality order: the cardinal sign of each element takes the Twos, Threes and Fours, the fixed sign takes the Fives, Sixes and Sevens, and the mutable sign takes the Eights, Nines and Tens.
Fire runs through Wands, so Aries takes the Two, Three and Four of Wands, Leo takes the Five, Six and Seven, and Sagittarius takes the Eight, Nine and Ten. The same pattern runs through Cups for water, Swords for air and Pentacles for earth. Aces sit outside it: an Ace is the element itself rather than any part of the year.
The astrology itself
Everything on this page is what the tarot tradition attaches to the signs and planets. If you want the astrology calculated rather than described, from real ephemeris data, that is what our sister site does.
Memento AstraMore on the correspondences
The sign attributions in prose, and the numbered cards that carry the decans.
What the Numbers Mean in Tarot, Ace to Ten
Forty numbered cards look like forty things to memorise. They are ten numbers crossed with four elements, and once you see that you can construct any of them.
What Is a Tarot Birth Card? The Maths, Shown
Add your birth date up and reduce it, and you land on one or more Major Arcana. Here is the arithmetic in full, why people get different numbers of cards, and how old the idea is.
Tarot and astrology questions
Straight answers, without the mystique.
Each sign takes one Major Arcana trump: Aries has 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 and Pisces The Moon. Each sign also carries three numbered cards and one court card.
One trump for the sign itself, three numbered cards for its three decans (each sign covers thirty degrees, split into ten-degree thirds), and one court card. Twelve signs at five cards each accounts for sixty of the seventy-eight. The rest are the four Aces and four Pages, which are elemental rather than zodiacal, and the ten majors that take a planet instead.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in the late nineteenth century. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was built on their system, which is why most modern decks inherit it. The original fifteenth century Italian decks had no astrological scheme at all.
Because of this exact system. The Golden Dawn moved Strength to VIII and Justice to XI so the trumps would line up with the zodiac in order, and Waite followed them. Older French decks such as the Marseille use the opposite arrangement.
They were discovered long after the attributions were fixed, so they were fitted to single trumps rather than woven through the deck: Uranus to The Fool, Neptune to The Hanged Man, Pluto to Judgement. None of them carries any numbered cards.