Jupiter’s Heroic Journey Through the Decans of Leo

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Jupiter's journey through the decans of Leo. If you are not aware of what the decans are, they are divisions of all of the signs of the zodiac into three parts, 10-degree parts. Each 10-degree part tells a story, and as planets go through the decans, they often map out the stories that the decans provide us with.

And the decans are really old, so we're going to take a look today at the three decans of Leo and the story that Jupiter's telling as it moves through each 10-degree portion. The reason for doing this is that Jupiter's just entered the second 10-degree portion of Leo, and we'll get into the third before turning retrograde. So we kind of get a preview of the whole story of Leo in direct motion, which doesn't always happen when Jupiter's transiting a sign.

So anyway, this should be fun, and if you've never heard about the decans before, I think it'll be interesting and very applicable for our tracking of Jupiter right now. So anyway, before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments, your reflections, give us the little thumbs up, turn on notifications. Subscribing is free to do, and it helps us grow and sustain what we do on the channel.

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All right. Well, here we can see that Jupiter is at 11 degrees of Leo, which puts it squarely into the second decan. What are the decans? How do they work? The decans are the divisions of the signs of the zodiac into 10-degree segments, and every sign has three of them. And there are a few different competing rulership systems, but the one that I use, I'll be using today, is the Chaldean order, meaning that the rulership of the signs wraps around the zodiac from one decan into the next, from the slowest moving planet to the fastest, repeating so Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, like that in order.

Anyway, the decans are really old. They predate Hellenistic astrology and end up being grafted onto the system of horoscopic astrology that we practice, dating back to the Hellenistic region and era of the world, and the decans come from Egypt and they're a part of a decanic magic tradition. It's been a lot of people have done some really good writing on them. T. Susan Chang, Austin Coppock are a few of my favorites in terms of the sources that I've used for the masterclass that I've been teaching this year, 2026 on the decans.

It's not too late to pick that up, by the way. If you want to catch up with the decan masterclass I've been teaching, you can check out the masterclass page on the website. But for those of you who are interested in some deeper tracking with planets moving through the signs, the decans are an absolutely fantastic way to do that work. And let's. What I want to do briefly is just I just want to show you specifically the journey that Jupiter is on, and we're going to track Jupiter through the decans so that you have a timeline first, and I'm going to keep the south node.

Oh, whoops! You know what? I totally messed that up. Let's put in Jupiter. Get out Mars there. Now, if we go back to Jupiter's entrance into Leo, the first decan, we're talking about the very end of June, beginning of July, that Jupiter enters the sign of Leo. Now it spends the first couple of months, basically, right up until mid-August. It transitioned into the second decan of Leo just recently. Once it reaches 10 degrees, basically, it is in that next decan.

So that took place about August 15, just after the solar eclipse in Leo. Of course, the South Node is also in Leo right now. Now let's take this forward and watch how Jupiter moves through this second decan. Jupiter's march through the second decan, we'll take it up to 20 degrees by October 3. Then we're going to see Jupiter get in pretty deep into that third and final decan, and then station and turn retrograde. And this is by about December.

Then it's going to retrograde and come back down through the second decan again, and this is in late February. And that journey through the second decan will include another station to turn direct, and that station to turn direct is in about the middle of April. So the station direct happens, and then it's just camped out in that second decan, and then in May it goes into the third decan, and then it's on the home stretch before entering Virgo, which will take place in July.

What that means is that our first decan journey is over, and we are squarely in the second and third decans of Leo, with a lot of second decan activity to come. So I thought it would make for a good exercise to visit the decans of Leo today and just talk to you about the story of these three decans, specifically the second decan today, but all three in general. So in order to do that, I'm going to have to show you some pictures.

So you'll be, it'll be like show and tell, and then let me just actually I need to move one of my screens around here so that I can have this ready. Okay, so as planets move through the decans again, they tend to tell a story. It's like a three-act play that's taking place from one 10-degree segment to the next. So, the first decan is associated with the Five of Wands and with the planet Saturn.

So the decans also have a history of being related to the Tarot cards, and the Five of Wands is thought to be the Tarot card associated with that first 10-degree segment of Leo, and the ruler is Saturn. And I think it's fascinating because the initial experience of this first decan is about struggle and about conflict, and about finding your place in the world, even when there are things like competition, creative friction, rivalries, comparison, infighting, a clash among peers, and the disorder that comes when we're trying to establish a creative direction for our life.

You could say that this conflict or competition is within us. Like, what's going to win out? What competing needs or desires are vying for the throne? And creative conflict or competition can be entirely internal. These could be characters on your own inner council that are vying for attention or trying to, you know, kind of figure out which one is going to take us into the future, and Saturn is traditionally in its detriment in the sign of Leo, bringing up that very old Sun-Saturn dyad.

The tension between the Sun and Saturn is an interesting one. Can you separate from the collective without conflict and alienation? Can you be yourself and hold your own ground without having to win or dominate? Are you allowed to be different? What happens if you're misunderstood? What happens if you exist outside some kind of established order? These kinds of conflicts are depicted by the card, the Five of Wands, but also by Saturn's rulership over this first decan.

If your will, your creative identity, is like a little center of gravity, this first decan puts us in touch with the fact that there are many other little centers of gravity out in the world. Everyone has a voice, a claim to be special or significant. Everyone is, in a way, vying for attention, and there's a lot of jostling. And in that, and again, that could be entirely internal too, where it's like, what are my interests? What is the light that is guiding my path and the competing interests, or personalities, or voices on my inner council.

So, in other words, it doesn't have to be literal enemies or sparring partners like these kids look like they are. But it's a competition of will in a creative way, and before one can lead, there has to be a kind of sorting out of priorities and a mitigation or a mediation of different kinds of creative conflicts. Now, in that first decan of Leo, we're also talking about the difficulty of being oneself when groupthink is at work.

Groupthink is an inevitable part of life. We're all social animals, so it's not even necessarily a bad thing. You have to know how to be a part of something bigger than yourself to get along in this world. You have to know who your allies and friends are. You have to know what communities or what beliefs guide your path, what convictions morally, socially, politically, religiously, academically. Like you have to know the subjects you like, the teachers that speak to you.

There's all sorts of ways that we have to align ourselves within collectives. At the same time, there is elitism, and there is competition, and there is conflict, and we're constantly having to navigate the potential that to be yourself means that you either dominate from within a group, you vie for popularity, you win and become the most influential or the most dominant in one way or another, or you risk potentially being alienated and having no one or feeling like you don't belong to anything.

And those are probably false dichotomies in the first decan of Leo that we're sorting out, so that first decan is really interesting. One of the people that comes to my mind who was born with the Sun in the first decan of Leo is Carl Jung. I think it was about three degrees of Leo that his Sun was at, if I'm remembering correctly. But I used him in my talk on the decans in this year's masterclass.

He speaks to the formation of the individual self and individuation in relation to the enormous powers of the collective psyche. And individuation is not just like I'm special. You know, if you study Jung, you know that it's the very difficult process of differentiating oneself from collective expectations, while also entering into a thoughtful relationship with your own shadow or unconscious material. He did so himself in terms of how he left. What do I want to say in terms of how he individuated relative to his teacher?

In this sense, he had to leave a kind of established intellectual kingdom. Or had he conformed in a certain way, he might have been handed the crown, and out of that intellectual and sort of spiritual exile, his own mature work evolved, and so meaningful individuation from collectives, despite potential conflict and alienation, is a theme. I will let everyone meditate on that. So, let me tell you another person who was a big deal in my childhood, and probably a lot of your childhoods, like high school, was Monica Lewinsky, also a first decan Leo Sun.

And her story is very Five of Wands first decan Saturn-ruled first decan of Leo, because she had the very painful experience of her identity being swept up in collective drama, and her part of her story is about all of this, you know, this public humiliation and moral combat and media spectacle and all of it. But later, her development is really important because later she reclaimed the right to sort of narrate her own experience, and she emerged as an advocate addressing things like shame and public humiliation and cyberbullying.

So there's that same theme of creative individuation taking place. Okay, well that's just some cliff notes of the first decan of Leo, but now we're moving into the second decan. What will that look like for the next couple of months until we have Jupiter entering decan three? And then what does decan three look like? Well, decan two is the Jupiter-ruled decan, and Jupiter is now moving into its own decan. This is the Six of Wands, which is sometimes called victory.

And you can tell, I mean, just by looking at this card, there's a kind of affirmation or a sense of arrival and legitimacy, and let's just say the competitor emerges from that conflict or competition and is recognized. Now, what does that mean, though? Right, because the shadow of this card could be arrogance or vanity or riding on a high horse. If you have done the meaningful work of differentiating yourself, of facing the potential fear of alienation or ostracization, of figuring out who you are and what you stand for apart from others, and maybe apart from your uniqueness having to be rooted in victory over others, then in a sense, you are crowned with an achievement.

And let's just say if you've done this work spiritually, internally, morally, then that achievement doesn't necessarily have to be outward, and that's a very Jupiter South Node kind of theme. The crowning achievement of the Six of Wands might be confidence that you have internally that no one else can see, but this is what you feel like internally. It's not riding on a high horse externally. It's feeling like you've found your place and you've done some difficult work and feel proud of yourself for having done it.

You know you believe in yourself. You have some valuable confidence. It's maybe even made you a more generous, wiser, kinder person. Jupiter in this decan is sort of about arriving in a stable place of creative authority. And I think if life is a process of creative unfolding, then there are stages where we can really recognize I've done something, I've come a long way, and look at the results. Maybe that means externally, people are validating your results.

Things like job promotions can come with Jupiter in the second decan of Leo. Things like validation of hard work, or someone or something achieving a real moment of accomplishment. So I'm struggling to find my words. What I'm trying to articulate is that this doesn't have to be about fame. It doesn't have to be about success over other people, especially since that first decan is about creative conflict and creative differentiation that doesn't need to be about dominance.

And yet in the second decan, you know, new kings and queens are crowned in the external public arena. Popularity contests are won and lost, and this decan is like welcoming someone to the victorious platform that they've arrived on. But what does that mean when it's creative and alchemical and spiritual? I think that's the question. Now, another temptation of this card is: if you are receiving some measure of success, then can you receive it without becoming inflated or arrogant?

What is the higher value or ideal that your creative work or leadership serves, and how do you stay in line with that legacy rather than getting puffed up when it's doing well? How can your gifts or your creative confidence or inspiration serve something bigger than yourself? That might be the horse that you're riding on. So in this second decan of Leo, we're working with some of these themes, and it can also be about recognizing that for every victory, the shadow is often the loser.

And if victories are based on dominance over the loser, then we're perpetuating a cycle, and the karma of that cycle will come back to us eventually. Let's look at this second decan. So talking about August 15, but Jupiter in Leo will be in this decan now for us all the way until early October. So the next let's say month and a half, I guess being a little generous here, about a month and a half of Jupiter in the second decan, and then we're going to see Jupiter go into that third decan, but then it comes back through retrograde in late February.

And from late February all the way to right here, about late May, we're also in the second decan. So late February to late May plus August through October. It's a long period of time to be in decan two, really thinking about what does accomplishment mean? What does it mean to distinguish our creative voice from others and feel strong and good about ourselves? Now let's go into the third decan of Leo because there's one last card. When we get into, excuse me.

All right. Oh, and by the way, actually, before I do that, so I was going to mention Barack Obama is a second decan Sun, and Meghan Duchess of Sussex is also a second decan Sun. Two really interesting figures, very different people, different stories, but we're talking about people that their story is very much about that second decan sense of Leo of having arrived and being at its best. I think the second decan of Leo is like creative differentiation.

Like I've been through a fire, I have retained something of my individuality. I haven't just completely discarded the collective, but I've not been like a total sellout, and I've not been someone who has been completely alienated. I've sort of held the tension of those two things. Right, that's the second decan of Leo space, and now I emerge in that space as someone who has done meaningful creative differentiation and has a place in the world that I can feel good about.

Interestingly, both Barack Obama and Meghan Duchess of Sussex, Sussex, excuse me, have different tensions they hold in terms of being a part of something that's sort of royal, like the presidency or the monarchy or whatever. But they hold ways of being in those spaces that are distinct. Whether you like them or not, does not matter to me on the archetypal level. All right. Well, finally, we get to the third decan ruled by Mars. The decans of Leo are intense, man.

The story of Leo is intense because wherever there is the sovereignty of the Sun, you know, there's competition and conflict often, and questions about what do we live for that's more than just power. Leo decan three, Mars, Seven of Wands. When you have creatively differentiated and individuated relative to collectives and communities, you will attract resistance or conflict, and it will test what you're about. Well, is this really about your position and defending your position, or is this about defending something bigger than yourself and maybe yourself simultaneously?

But that third face of Leo is like: What are you defending? How do you respond when something like your authority or your creative positioning is challenged? And are you tapping into courage or aggression? What do you stand for that's bigger than you yourself? What are you defending that is bigger than your own ego? Does power, accomplishment, pride in your position serve a principle, or again something bigger? And also, how do you respond to tests or challenges of your loyalty, your dedication, your ego?

Now, it's strange because if the Six depicts a victory, then the Seven is like, well, you know, there's responsibility that comes with victory, or there's even just let's say you achieve something like developing your client practice as some kind of practitioner. Maybe you're an acupuncturist, and you develop a client practice. It's a real, you know, you go to school. You have to differentiate yourself from a whole bunch of people studying acupuncture. Not that they're your direct competitors, but you have to go out there and make your own name, your own practice, get your own thing going.

That second decan of Leo might feel like, hey, I've arrived, I've got a healthy client practice, and I've made a path for myself, and I've kind of differentiated myself from the people I went to school with, you know, who are all doing things. But like, I found my own niche, very Leo decan two. The number three could be as simple as like, how do you keep it up? You know what I mean? Like, how do you keep it going? How do you protect those hard-won gains?

Maintaining things that you've built requires a lot of dedication and effort. It requires putting out a lot of little fires. Like, you know, you've got to deal with your bills and your client upkeep, and the management of the building you're renting from changes hands, and now you've got to negotiate a new lease for your office space. And you know, so we can easily devolve and lose the joy for what we're doing, because of the perseverance required to keep going with good creative things in this third decan. So there's a kind of courage to persist under pressure that comes up in the third decan of Leo.

Now, let's go back to Nichepso. So that third decan of Leo, we're gonna get into that third decan as early as October. So it's like okay, and then we stay in that third decan from October all the way to the end of February. It's a long time to be in Leo decan three. Then we go through that second decan period, and then we are back to the third decan from June through July. So a lot of Leo decan two and three to come, with some of the initial creative conflicts and differentiation coming this summer of like late June 2026 through mid-August 2026.

So it's interesting that Jupiter's retrograde pattern keeps it from spending a lot of time in the first decan. So if you experienced conflict among peers or creative conflict within yourself during this first decan, the next two decans are really where the rest of the story is taking us. All right. Well, that's what I've got for you today. I hope this was informative, interesting. That it's a useful way of tracking the development of Jupiter in Leo.

And again, if you're interested in the decans, you can check out the masterclass. It'll be archived once it's all done too. You can buy any masterclass I've ever taught on the website shop page, so check that out as well. All right, that's what I've got for today. Have a great day, everybody. We'll see you again next time. Bye.