The Decan Walk Starts Now: What the Spring Equinox Has to Do With Your Tarot Practice

Every year, something shifts around the equinox. The light changes. The air changes. And if you work with tarot in any serious way, your practice wants to change too.

The spring equinox isn't just a seasonal marker — it's the beginning of the astrological new year. The sun moves into 0° Aries, and with it, a whole cycle begins. For tarot practitioners, this moment is a natural invitation to start something called the decan walk.

If you've never heard of it, you're about to fall down a rabbit hole in the best possible way.

What Is the Decan Walk?

The decan walk is a contemplative tarot practice built around the 36 decans of the zodiac.

Here's the quick breakdown: each of the 12 zodiac signs is divided into three 10-degree segments called decans. That gives you 36 decans total, spread across the astrological year. Each decan is associated with one of the numbered pip cards in the tarot's minor arcana — the 2s through 10s, across all four suits.

The walk itself is simple in structure: you spend roughly one week sitting with each decan card as the sun moves through that portion of the sky. You observe. You journal. You let the card's imagery meet whatever is actually happening in your life in that moment.

It takes a full year to complete. And it changes how you read.

The decan walk trains your eye to see tarot cards not as isolated symbols, but as windows into living, moving energy — energy that corresponds to the season, the stars, and your own experience. Most people who do it once never go back to reading cards the same way.

The decans also show up in your natal chart. Whatever sign your sun is in, you were born into one of its three decans — and that decan's planetary ruler adds a layer to how that sign's energy expresses in you. If you've ever felt like you don't quite fit the standard description of your sun sign, the decans are often why.

Where the Walk Begins

The first decan of the astrological year is the first decan of Aries, and its tarot card is the 2 of Wands.

If you know that card — the figure standing at a parapet, holding the world in their hand, looking out at what hasn't happened yet — you'll understand why the equinox is the right moment to begin. There's vision there. There's fire. There's the particular courage it takes to start something before you know how it ends.

That's the energy of Aries I. That's the energy of right now.

The Book Behind the Practice: 36 Secrets by T. Susan Chang

The decan walk as a structured practice was popularized — and, for many of us, made truly accessible — through the work of author and tarot scholar T. Susan Chang.

Her book, 36 Secrets: A Decanic Book of Hours for the Tarot, is the definitive guide to this work. It explores each of the 36 decans through tarot, astrology, Picatrix (a medieval grimoire of astrological magic), mythology, and poetry. Every entry is layered and literary — this is not a beginner's keyword book. It's a book you read slowly, return to, and grow into.

If you want to find T. Susan Chang's work, here's where to look:

• Book: 36 Secrets: A Decanic Book of Hours for the Tarot — available through major booksellers and independent tarot shops

• Search terms to find her: T. Susan Chang tarot, T. Susan Chang 36 Secrets, T. Susan Chang decan walk, T. Susan Chang Fortune's Wheelhouse podcast, T. Susan Chang Tarot Visions podcast

• Her other writing: She co-authored Tarot Deciphered with M.M. Meleen, which maps tarot symbolism across multiple traditions

• Online: She has been active in the tarot education community for years and is widely cited in serious tarot study circles

  
  

If you're part of our Tarot Study Group here in Chicago, 36 Secrets has come up more than once. It rewards re-reading at every level.

Why This Matters Even If You're Not a Tarot Reader

The decan walk isn't only for people who read cards professionally or even regularly. It's a practice in paying attention — to time, to pattern, to the particular texture of each week as it actually arrives.

"A lot of people book their first tarot reading because they want more self-awareness." They want a language for what they're experiencing, a way to track change, a mirror that doesn't just reflect back what they already expect to see.

The decan walk offers exactly that. And starting it at the equinox — at the literal turning point of the year — gives the practice a grounded, living container.

You're not just studying a card. You're studying a card in its season.

How to Start

You don't need to read the whole book before you begin. Here's the minimal entry point:

1. Pull the 2 of Wands from your deck.

2. Place it somewhere you'll see it this week.

3. Notice what comes up — in your life, in the world, in yourself — that rhymes with that card's energy.

4. Write it down if you can.

   
   

That's it. That's the walk. You can layer in 36 Secrets as you go.

If you want company while you do it, that's what the Tarot Study Group is for. We meet on select Saturdays at Eli Tea Bar in Andersonville — it's a good place to bring your observations, your questions, and the cards you can't stop thinking about.

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