A 3rd Decan Sarcophagus — Revisiting the Recent Solar Eclipse in Virgo

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

Today we are going to revisit our recent solar eclipse in the sign of Virgo by taking a look at the third decan of the sign of Virgo. If you're not familiar with the decans, I'll be telling you more about what they are. And in particular, we're going to be looking at this third and final decan and its meaning and symbolism as a way of continuing to work with and understand the eclipse that we are really still in the midst of.

Anytime that you're in a moon cycle that started with an eclipse, you're still in that eclipse window. Not only that, but for several lunar cycles that come right after an eclipse, you're typically still in the eclipse window. So it's still a very good time to be thinking about this recent solar eclipse, and as I'm preparing my 2026 master classes, which are on the decans, I thought it might be a nice time to tell you a little bit about what they are and use them as a way of deepening our connection to this recent eclipse. So that's our agenda for today.

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Okay, well, let's take a look at the real time clock and refresh ourselves on the eclipse that happened recently. So here we are on Friday and, well, you can't see that right now. It's Friday, September 26 as you're listening to this. But if we go back to Sunday, September 21 just five days ago or so, we had a solar eclipse in the sign of Virgo.

Now we've we talked at length on the channel about that eclipse, and if you missed the episodes where I unpack it or give some horoscopes for it still really worth taking a look at that content if you missed it, because, like I said, we're still in the midst of an eclipse, moon cycle, it is something that plays out, not just for a day, but for several months to come. In fact, for usually a whole year and a half of recurring eclipses in the same signs, the same whole sign house will be active. And those cycles of change have long 18 month, year historic patterns behind them as well. So worth looking at if you haven't yet.

But anyway, you'll notice that this eclipse formed at the very end of the sign of Virgo. Right now, I'm in the midst of preparing my curriculum for my yearly Master Class series, which is basically a series that I do for intermediate students of astrology who are enrolled in my programs, who may be interested in topics that go slightly outside of the scope of our main programs. There are so many topics in astrology we can't focus we can't cover all of them in the depth and detail that they deserve. So every year, I run a master class to cover things that may be outside the scope of our core curriculum.

In 2026 I will be giving my first class on the decans. What are they? You ask the decans, are you could think of them as a kind of dignity category, the way that we think of planets in their exaltation or their rulership, their bound, their triplicity. The Deccan is a form of planetary rulership and. That takes place throughout 10 degree divisions of the zodiac. So there's 36 decans overall for the 360 degrees of the zodiac. Each planet rules 10 degrees of a sign. So you have the first 10 degrees of any sign of the zodiac, the second 10 degrees and the third 10 degrees, every sign being 30 degrees, you get three decans per sign with a planet that is considered to be the ruler of those 10 degrees.

Now, the decans come from a pre existing form of let's call it ritual planetary magic that actually comes prior to the advent of Hellenistic astrology as its roots in Egypt. Egyptian mysticism and decantic Magic is a very old thing, but it becomes, it becomes a part of Hellenistic astrology and horoscopic astrology. And there are several different forms of competing planetary rulerships for the decans, I'm going to be working with the Chaldean order in the Master Class series that I teach.

But either way, what becomes really interesting about these decans is that as time goes on, they the decans become associated with almost like magical images. So if you are familiar with the Sabian symbols, for example, or even those sacred images that I sometimes use in horoscopes, there were also something like alchemical, magical, incantational images that were associated with the decans, not just one image, but different images coming from different lines of magic. Let's call it.

So when you study the decans, what you're studying is a swath of degrees in a sign and how that degree, that section of degrees, is sort of telling a story from the first 10 degrees to the second 10 degrees to the third 10 degrees, with different planets ruling each set of 10 degrees and with different sort of magical images associated with them. This is really old, too, and so is there a historical precedent for something like the Sabian symbols? Yeah, they're the decans. That's a simple way of thinking about it that I hope is helpful.

There are two books that I want to refer you to, in case you've never read something on the decans and you want to dig deeper. Come take the master class that'll be on sale through the Kickstarter, obviously, at the end of the year, and you'll learn all about the decans in the Nightlight community. I hope you'll do that. But there are a couple of good sources. This is 36 spaces written by Austin Coppock on the decans. I think this might be out of print, but certainly Austin is someone who is, he's very familiar with them and a good resource.

The other one would be T. Susan Chang, who has been a guest teacher at Nightlight. She wrote a book called 36 secrets, a decanic journey through the Minor Arcana of the Tarot. So as the tradition goes on, the decans become associated with different tarot cards, as well as the magical images and the ruling planets. To me, that is just really, really fascinating. And so the master class that I'm teaching in the new year, for example, will have an element of that masterclass that is devoted to explaining the correlation between certain tarot cards and the decans and the planet and the magical images associated. I'll also be doing some associating of I Ching hexagrams. So it's going to be a really fun series that will give you a way of working with the decans.

Today. What I want to do is give you a little sample of what this Master Class series will look like by reflecting on the recent solar eclipse in the third decan of Virgo, I have five things to watch for given the placement of the eclipse in that third and final decan of Virgo.

What I want to do today is I want to read you a brief excerpt from Austin Coppock's wonderful book that's really one of my favorite books, just so you can get a feel for it and kind of get exposed to one of the experts on the subject. And again, I also hope you'll check out his work. He's a regular on the astrology podcast, so here's what he says. The image that is associated with this third decan of Virgo is the sarcophagus. The last decade of Virgo shows the fate of all matter. Now we're talking now about an earth sign, right? So the end of an earth sign, he's relating to the end of all matter, the fate of all matter to be brought to perfection and then crumbled to dust, for there is not created which is invulnerable to the ever shifting tides of generation and corruption. The Spirit gazes upon its inevitable separation from matter here contemplating the consequences of its brief union.

Remember that Virgo is a sign whose very final degrees take us into the Fall Equinox, into the underworld of the solar year. And so these last degrees are an anticipation of entering the earthly plane of mortality or death. That's the entrance into the underworld that takes place here. And I love the way Austin puts this. Many of the images associated with this face picture the forces of decay. It. Ezra describes a white woman praying to God, but the very hands she prays with are leprous. The link between the material and spiritual forces the hands which pray are beginning to decay, promising the connections inevitable termination.

Meanwhile, the Latin Picatrix describes it as a face of weakness, old age, illness, sloth, the injury of limbs and the destruction of other people. It pictures a, quote, pale man of large body wrapped in a white linen cloth, suggesting a burial shroud of the process of mummification. Mummification is pictured directly in the liber Hermetis, which says, of this, of this, decan quote, it's like a mummy. Its whole body is like one who is buried Agrippa. Three books of occult philosophy continue the jolly theme picture, picturing, quote, a white woman and deaf or an old man leaning on a staff. These images are described as signifying weakness, infirmity, loss of members, destruction of trees, depopulation of lands. Indeed, time and space are diseases for which there is only one cure.

So you can see that the end of the earth sign that comes at the end of the light half of the year, ushering us into darkness, is being associated with things that fall apart. This is one very powerful element of this third and final decan of Virgo. And that's just a little sample from Austin. I want to read you just a tiny little sample from T. Susan Chang. And also highly recommend you pick up her book, good astrologer, seemingly even better person.

So let me pick up here. So in her book, she spends a good amount of time explaining the association between three tarot cards and this decan, this last decan of Virgo, is ruled by Mercury. And not only is it ruled by Mercury, but it then shares domicile and exaltation rulership in the last 10 degrees. So the last 10 degrees of Virgo. The Deccan is ruled by Mercury. The sign is ruled by Mercury, and it's also exalted in mercury is in Virgo. And so this becomes a very powerful 10 degrees of Hermes.

She associates the magician, the hermit and the 10 of pentacles. And historically, some of those cards are associated with the last decade of Virgo as well, with the final card of Virgo, we come to the end of the story of Earth. The suit of Pentacles talks to us about bodies, things, money. It's the story of the life of matter. Earth's elemental major is the world, appropriately enough, within the rounded confines of its wreath. We are born, we live, we die and then we begin again. Stories of the World are stories of redemption and return. They are stories of our existence in the finite fields of time and the language of market. The market informs the way we talk about that existence. We spend our lives doing something. We save lives. Our lives have value. We built a livelihood. We sought our purpose. We fashioned an inheritance for our successors. Whatever we first conceived, we have now brought to Earth and made real as above so below the magician, Avatar of mercury, ruler of Virgo, shows us it is so.

So here she's talking about the perfection of something through the magician and the hermit, the careful, long cultivation of crafts, resources, skills, abilities, knowledge, intellect, taking those things and transforming them into something earthy, substantive, useful, practical, and building something from it in the material realm. Now we're at a threshold where the passing of that on through the portal of death in legacies and inheritances, or passing on a tradition, passing on knowledge through schools and lineages successors that come after us and carry on the wisdom we pass down as teachers. This is the kind of thing that she is associating with the final decan of Virgo, being a place of the 10 of pentacles, a kind of culmination of accomplishment.

Let me actually show you an image of the 10 of pentacles so you can see it, because it's pretty cool to see. Let's see if I can bring it up here. Okay, here it is. So this is just briefly the 10 of pentacles. So there you can see there's an old man sitting in a chair. There's 10 Pentacles. This is the final card of the suit of Pentacles. And there's a sense of what you've built over a lifetime. This is kind of like an old patriarch, you know, who's built something and is passing it on, and the children in the family are enjoying the fruits of a labor. Take away the patriarchal imagery of the rider Waite, if it doesn't resonate, the idea being, what have you built? What legacy Are you now ready to pass on? Or what has. Reached a process of culmination and completion in terms of things that you've built with your own hands, learned with your own mind, developed and cultivated, crafted through skill and time and effort.

So I love that, although there's a kind of sarcophagus imagery, you know, heading into the underworld, things that fall apart, things that decay, things that die materially and have to be let go of. It's also, what have you perfected? What have you completed? As far as you could in terms of the material world, there will be a point in time where, you know, I die and the development of my skill as an astrologer will be over. It just won't continue unless I do it in another lifetime, or I'll retire and the you know, I hope to anyway. We'll see. But if I, you know, retire, then that will be the end of continuing to develop and cultivate something. And all I'll have left is what I've passed on to students, their students, my kids, and whatever interest they take in astrology. Maybe this is what the third and final deck in a Virgo is pointing to.

This is a little section she has called roads of no return. Implicit in these stories of creation is the death of the Creator. The Hermit is a mercurial guide to the underworld, safely conducting the sun's light through darkness to rise again. Welcome to the realm of the psycho pomp. But our chthonic Guide is a God of interpretation and translation, a trickster and offense. Although he may safeguard the light as it travels through its netherworld, we can't expect it to emerge unaltered. Hermes, famous, famous friend to man, takes our ghostly hand as we leave this world, conducting us on a one way journey like the sun, we surely rise again, but never as we were before.

Chthonic Hermes is said to live by Cocytus, the river of lamentation. I'm not sure how you pronounce that on the road of necessity, from which none may return. The only way out is through the Deccan imagery teems with death, signifiers, pale figures wrapped in Shroud like white linens. Commentators agree that the face indicates weakness, illness, age, debility, destruction, even the loss of members. We can think of the light in the hermit's lantern as the light of the human soul, as the hermit tenders that light into the care of its underworld guardians, the body falls lifeless. It's no coincidence that Virgo three is the first shadow decan of the queen of swords, she who is so well known for separation, divorce and widowhood, graceful though she is and attuned to the airy music of Venus, her sovereignty and power begin with the dance of death.

In the Northern Hemisphere, Virgo three sees the sunlit day diminish till it's equal with the night. The days are just long enough to bring in the harvest from the last fading crops and store it for the cool weather ahead, or collect its seeds for spring. What I love there is she talks about death, but she also talks about the death moment of harvest as a culminating moment of gathering and reaping what's been sown.

So there are really two ways of looking at the end of Virgo. One is about the inevitable collapse and diminishment of material things that is part of the cycle of life and death in the material world itself. The other one is about the harvest. What have you built? What have you made? What have you what will you pass on after death that comes from your own skill. And I love that she uses the images of the hermit and of the magician. Let me show you the Hermit card, famously, by the way, you know, we often think of the hermit as a kind of what do you call it a like a Led Zeppelin album cover, you know. So let me show you case you've never seen before. I'm sure most of you have, but there's the hermit from Rider Waite, I believe that's from Rider Waite, it's not some, maybe some version of the Rider Waite, but so a psycho pump bringing us into the underworld, and the hermit also represents those things that over long passages of time have developed. Like the hermit is a wise old figure, a wise old magician, you know, the one who's honed their craft over a long period of time.

So with all of this in mind from the third decade of Virgo, we can now consider the eclipse the whole sign house. It's in the topics may be active right now in our birth charts, in terms of these five things. Number one is burials. What is reaching a place of conclusion? What is coming to an end materially, what is being diminished or let go of materially? It's a very appropriate thing to be thinking about for the very final degrees of the last Earth, sign of the light, half of the year. So just metaphorical burials, what are we putting back into the earth? What are we releasing? And a burial is also about what's being passed on through the ancestors, through the dead. What gifts do they carry with them into the ground? Most burial traditions include giving with the soul some valuable things that they carry with them into the afterlife, or that are symbols of what they left behind, although they will still carry emblems of what they left behind with them in their actual burial.

Number two would be legacies and preservation. Conversation, how do I continue on with something after the death? After something has finished? How do I keep something going beyond moments of closure or resolution can become an interesting consideration for an eclipse happening at the very last degrees of an earth sign that comes right before the entrance into the underworld. Legacies and preservation, the concern with not just what I've built, but how to pass it on, how to make it continue on beyond a threshold of some kind.

So a great question for this, like a simple example of something that would be perfect for the last degree of Virgo. I'm hobby bodybuilder, just a fun thing that I like to do for myself. But I have some ambition to compete in an amateur show, just for fun, not to place, not to win, just to say I did it. It's kind of a dream of mine. We'll see if it happens or not. I don't know, but one thing that I know that is quite common is that when people who are not professionals do a marathon or they do a bodybuilding show, and you've crossed that threshold, the question often becomes, what role will this lifestyle play after I've run the race? Will, you know, I keep running? How will I keep this as a active part of my lifestyle, beyond the meeting of the goal or the harvesting of the work and the Reaping of the benefit I ran that marathon? Well, you know, you gained a lot of health and a lot of inner good feelings from having a daily practice of running. Surely, there's a way of keeping that around, even if it won't be in the same way prepping for a marathon. You see what I'm saying. So there's a way of asking, How do I continue with something after or beyond a threshold of change that demarcates the end of one process and the beginning of another?

Number three, purification and mortality. When we think about Virgo in general, we think a lot about the process of purification and forgiveness and acceptance. We're all going to have stains and imperfections. This sign has so much to do with getting better and eliminating stains. It's like Virgo is like the best stain remover that we have in the cupboard, astrologically, but it is also a sign that frequently asks us to accept and live with faults and imperfections. You got a little tomato sauce on your chin. No big deal. It's life dealing with the need to get better, the need to be clean, the need to be pure, the need to purify, the need to heal and the inevitable decay. That juxtaposition is especially poignant in the final degrees of Virgo, which is why so many of the images of this decan have to do with things like praying hands that are leprous.

Number four Hermes thresholds. What kind of transition is Hermes bringing us through right now? This is a simple way of thinking about the fact that Hermes ruled sign that comes at the end of summer taking us into the underworld. Is an eclipse happening there in this third decan ruled by Hermes, associated with the magician, the hermit. What kind of hermetic process does mercury want to usher us into from one world into another? So I really look for the presence of Hermes right now in this eclipse.

And then finally, the question of enough. How much is enough? The idea behind the deck in the last decade of Virgo, that's very obvious, is the harvesting. But there might be because of the emphasis that Virgo has on death and the underworld. Like you can't take it all with you. Even the pharaohs can't take everything into their tombs, you know. And they probably have the biggest, you know, they probably get the most supplies. But this last Dec end does talk about the process of becoming simpler and letting go. It's like, how do you Marie condo, your soul? How much is enough? And material accumulation versus simplicity is something that comes about in these final degrees of Virgo as the last sign of summer is yielding to the darkness, the death, the letting go. How much is enough knowledge? How much is enough skill or ability? How how much money or learning? How many degrees do I need? There is an opportunity for, perhaps for a sense of excessiveness to be cut back. And what it means to have done enough and to call it good retirement comes to mind. When can you just say, okay, you know, I did enough. Life, I find that many people really struggle with that. So the last deck in a Virgo can be about because it's so close to the harvest symbolism. It can be about letting go of something materially and letting it be enough.

Okay? So you can see, I hope, from this exercise, how magical and beautiful it is to work with the decans. They add a layer of storytelling and nuance to an astrological interpretation. That's lovely. I think if you overuse any tool in astrology, it can become redundant and lose its power, and it can lose its specialness. But I think with certain events like eclipses or playing with new moons or full moons sometimes or major transits in your birth chart, including a layer of decanic imagery and symbolism, it can be just like really wonderful adornment that helps us get just a little bit deeper access to the themes and symbols.

So anyway, stick around, because next, after I sign off, I'm going to tell you about the upcoming year one course ancient astrology for the modern mystic. This is the best thing I've created. You guys, if you want to study astrology in a really deep, meaningful way, get down to those philosophical roots and go why? Where does this all come from? What is astrology? What kind of knowledge can we say that it provides us with, and what isn't astrology? And also, how do we practice this with skill and craft and technique and intellectual understanding, but pair it with artistic, intuitive understanding. How do we make this psychological but also predictive? These are the kinds of things that we look at with this program, ancient astrology for the modern mystic.

Can't wait for a new program starting. This is our 31st program in 16 years. I can't wait to see you there. It's a very good time to be studying astrology over the course of the next year, with Uranus and Pluto trining in air signs, really nice combination for studying a celestial divinatory language. So anyway, that's it. Stick around and to hear more about it next, and we will see you again Monday. Bye, everyone.