My Decan Walk (+ Writing Progress in April)

 

I started a decan walk in my tarot practice. I am new to learning the astrology correspondents in tarot. When I first heard about a decan walk through a random YouTuber, I thought this would be a great way to learn the decans of each tarot card and the planets and archetypes associated with it. I have been interested in learning the planets, archetypes, and decans of each tarot card for about a year now. 

What is a decan walk?

A decan walk is a year-long, 36-stage journey where a tarot reader aligns with the Sun's movement through the 36 decans, which are 10-degree subdivisions of each zodiac sign. You match the minor arcana (2-10) with a Major arcana archetype for the zodiac and planets associated with that decan. 

For example, I started this decan walk during Taurus season. The first decan of Taurus in 2026 started on April 19th and lasted until April 29th. The minor arcana card is the Five of Pentacles. The Five of Pentacles represents the first decan of Taurus. It also represents Mercury in Taurus. Taurus' archetype is the Hierophant. The card that rules Mercury is the Magician. The Golden Dawn society gave these meanings. A decan walk provides a hands-on, 10-day cycle to study astrological timing, planetary influences, and tarot imagery. You also learn the Tree of Life from Qaballah studies. However, I have chosen not to study the Tree of Life yet. 

There are also court cards that align with each zodiac sign. You use the Knights - Kings. You do not use the Pages. For the decan walk in Taurus, the Knight of Pentacles represents him by some tarot readers and the King of Pentacles by others. I associate Taurus with the King of Pentacles. And I know I am probably going to get a lot of backlash for that. But I have heard that both interpretations are right.

Resources I'm Using:

I am using Tarot & Astrology by Corrine Kenner as well as Tarot Deciphered by T. Susan Chang. I'm also listening to The Tarot Podcast by T. Susan Chang and Fortune's Wheelhouse podcast, also by T. Susan Chang. Like I said, I am not doing the Tree of Life (and that's okay!). I'm also using a spreadsheet T. Susan Chang created of the timing of the decans for 2026 that she included in The Tarot Podcast. Normally, the decan for the first 10 degrees of Taurus is from April 20th-April 30th. However, some years it starts April 19th-April 29th. 

What I'm Learning:

I have heavily connected with the Five of Pentacles energy out of the three cards. I have always felt like an outsider looking in. But one thing I learned about the Five of Pentacles is that I choose to keep moving, whether the Hierophant invites me in. I also learned that Mercury does not feel good here. He is slow-moving, and it is like moving through a bunch of sludge. This is, however, a good time for thought processing and working through worry, rejection, and even resilience. I have learned to sit with my thoughts rather than acting upon them. I have learned that even if I am rejected by communities (either self-inflicted or intentional); I keep moving forward despite. 

The Five of Pentacles is the Lord of Material Trouble, or in T. Susan Chang's book Tarot Deciphered, Lord of Worry. It represents fixed earth. This can be a stubborn transit to go through. But once you realize the only way out is through, you're able to keep moving. And that's the thing...you gotta not let rejections, fears, and the negative keep you down. You just gotta keep pushing yourself forward. Don't quit. Rest. And then keep moving. 

The Hierophant was the card I connected with the least. The Taurus archetype. In a way, I feel like the Hierophant looks down on me. I feel like he doesn't like me doing my own thing and ignoring tradition. But aren't traditions meant to be broken? And what good is community if you can't be your authentic self? 

I lack community. A part of it is self-inflicted because I don't enjoy belonging to hierarchies or leaving the house. Another part of it is that when I try to fit into a community, I don't fit in. I have always found it difficult to fit into neat boxes. Fitting in and community have always been a struggle for me, despite my 11th house Sun in Virgo in my Placidus chart. I relate to my 12th house Sun in Virgo in Whole Sign chart than I do my 11th house Sun in Virgo in Placidus. The 11th house Sun shows popularity and people loving you. I find the complete opposite. I only have 24 friends on Facebook, 211 followers on my author_samanthajeantate Instagram, 27 followers on my private Instagram, and 34 followers on my author Facebook page 🤣 I also blame myself because I do not want to be seen fully.

I have recently made the observation that I am half-seen. I don't fully put myself out there. And the Hierophant taught me that I must fully put myself out there to be seen. Not half-assing it. But a reflection that came up in my journal, I asked myself, was, do I really want to be seen? And what does being seen actually mean?

It's interesting what this decan walk has brought up for me in just this first week alone. I even had a very intense dream where I woke up screaming and then fell back to sleep. I don't remember the dream, but I'm assuming that I was moving through that Five of Pentacles / Hierophant energy and Mercury expressed itself through screaming in my sleep. 

Another thought I had during this first week of Taurus season working through the Magician card that represents Mercury is, I have to will myself. Those "I Am" affirmations are a big part of getting out of that Five of Pentacles lack mentality. And it is also about using all the resources you have to help you get out of the Five of Pentacles upright and turn it into Five of Pentacles reversed. 

Once I realized I had tools at my disposal to get out of worry, I took advantage of them. I journaled. I talked with friends. I connected with my tarot decks. I acknowledged what I have. I traded scarcity for sufficiency. 

As the first decan of Taurus comes to a close and we move onto the second decan of Taurus, the Six of Pentacles, I have learned that I am resilient, despite getting knocked down by other people, myself, or circumstances. And I also learned that this resilience is in my blood. 

I connected the Five of Pentacles to my dad, whose birthday is April 30th and lines up with the traditional April 20th-April 30th dates. My dad has lived a rough life. His school expelled him for skipping English class in high school. He ended up going into the Army, not wanting to live with his mom or dad, on his 17th birthday. He then volunteered to go to Vietnam. While he was in Vietnam, they sprayed his camp with Agent Orange. He has tried to get disability from the VA since 1979. He also took a job at GM in Buick City here in Flint, Michigan. He would always get laid off. 

But the thing is...he didn't give up. He kept going. He kept fighting the VA until the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) helped him get his Agent Orange disability in 2021/2022. My dad worked odd jobs and even went to school for computer programming while GM laid him off. 

He worked at GM on the assembly line and later for the robotics in Plant 36 for 30 years. He retired. He owns his own home now. It just goes to show you that perseverance is the key to reversing the Five of Pentacles. My dad could have kept going to school for computer programming. He could have worked anywhere else. But GM was the only job that had significant benefits at that time. Not even a computer programmer had the benefits that GM had in the 80s and 90s. He never gave up. He didn't lie down and decide that he was worthless or not good enough. He fought. 

He fought for everything we had. And with Mercury in Taurus, you fight through the sludge. You notice the people in the RWS deck keep walking, despite being cold. Despite the church being warm and comforting and inviting. They kept their heads up. And who's to say that they entered the church but got rejected by the Hierophant? 

Sometimes, life requires us to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps instead of feeling sorry for ourselves and embracing self-pity. 

And that is my decan walk for the first week of Taurus. Today is the last day of the first decan of Taurus. Tomorrow, I will change my cards and focus on the Six of Pentacles, The Hierophant, and The High Priestess. 

My Writing Process: How I Create Tarot Spreads

 

Today, I thought I would share my process for how I create tarot spreads, mainly ones for my Saturday Morning Tarot series. So if you are a fellow tarot reader, grab a cuppa and take some notes. I have been designing my own tarot spreads since the early 00s, when I was first learning tarot. My process has grown a lot since then. I used to think the bigger the spread, the better the answers. That's not always the case!

First, I select a theme. In Saturday Morning Tarot: Tarot Spreads For Your Inner 80's Child, I knew I wanted to focus on popular 80s cartoons from the 1980s such as Rainbow Brite, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, Strawberry Shortcake, and others. I wanted the theme to be about self-discovery and inner child work. Mainly because inner child work was "cool" at the time of printing. I observed trends via Instagram and thought, "Inner child healing would be a significant theme for the book!"

Second, I researched the cartoons. I noticed themes and lessons within the cartoons themselves. I noticed my thoughts on how the cartoon made me feel as an adult, as well as watching it as a kid. I researched by rewatching cartoons and doing searches on Google through Wikipedia and Fandom sites and various articles throughout the internet. Cartoons that I wasn't familiar with, such as Thundercats, Transformers, G.I. Joe, I watched via YouTube or Tubi. I watched a few episodes of each show and leaned heavily into my research on Google. 

Third, I focused on one section of a cartoon at a time. When I was on Rainbow Brite, I watched nothing but Rainbow Brite cartoons to help me develop the spread. I did brainstorm with ChatGPT before I knew it was wrong (and have since stopped using in my process), but the spreads, I thought of their positions and the spread idea. I took Starlite, for example, and made that a self-confidence spread. I took Rainbow Brite and created a breakout from a gloomy funk spread that focused on mental health. 

I decided how many cards I wanted in the spread. I concentrated on having 4 to 9 cards for varying spreads. I wanted the spread to fit on a twin-size bed (which is what I sleep in currently and where I do my own tarot readings for myself). It's why you don't see anymore cards past 9 cards in the book. I tried to stay away from 1 to 3 card spreads as I felt inner child/self-growth work required more in-depth spreads than a 1 - to - 3 - card spread.

Once I decided how many cards I wanted, I got to creating the spread's positions. I wanted to stay away from yes-and-no/tell-me-what-to-do questions and stick to a more open-ended format. I wanted people to use the questions for tarot reading and also for reflecting in their journal without cards. Some, not all, met that goal in Saturday Morning Tarot: Tarot Spreads For Your Inner 80's Child.  I also wanted questions I could ask while shuffling and drawing cards, or that would give the user a theme for the reading.

After creating the questions, I went to Canva and designed using their clip art graphics, which are royalty-free and can be used freely as long as it's mixed media and not a standalone graphic. Since I could not use actual art from the cartoons themselves, because of the hurdles of copyright, I stuck to art that resembled the cartoons or had a theme of the cartoon (such as turtles for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or a woman with long, blonde hair for Lady Lovelylocks).

Saturday Morning Tarot: Tarot Spreads for Your Inner 90s Child will come with a new process in the book. Examples of certain spreads in action in my own readings. I will test one spread from each section and including my interpretation of the reading. I hope this will help novice tarot readers or casual tarot readers interpret the spreads.

Some spreads in 90s Child will be spreads I created back in the early aughts that I found in my old tarot journals. I will refine some spreads, and they will not be the exact spreads from the journal, as I focused on psychic abilities and reading people's minds with tarot back in the day (which is now a no-no).

And that, my friends, is my process on creating tarot spreads!