Your Venus Decan, Your Style
Styling with the Stars Vol. III is here!!
Hello friends,
I hope you are well. Spring has slowly been moseying towards us in the Pacific Northwest, but has gotten a little spooked and retreated a bit. I have been enjoying the peonies, irises and roses that have just begun to bloom this week and had the privilege of conducting the opening ceremony for my friend Rose’s art show this past Sunday, which you can learn more about in the post below.
I apologize for my absence! I have been deep in project mode and unable to formulate a worthy newsletter prior to its release but now is the time:
🎉Styling with the Stars Vol. III is finally here🎉
This guidebook, like the previous two, has been a labor of love geared towards bringing astrology down to earth while also showcasing its creative and playful potential. I created these guidebooks to help translate the complex and ornate language of the sky into approachable tips with concrete ways to bring astrology more intimately into your life.
To help you understand what this guidebook is all about, why I’m so excited about it and why this is the perfect astro-fashion guide for novices and experts alike, I’ll provide some excerpts from the introduction to give you a taste of what’s inside:
The first volume outlines the fashion senses of the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, complete with colors, trends, and Pinterest boards to give you plenty of ideas. The second volume helps you apply these planetary styles to your own chart and determine which planet or planets most influence and form the core foundation of your style.
This guidebook takes my original planetary delineations a step further and goes deep not just into the signs but the 36 decans that make up the zodiac. More specifically, I outline the many aspects and themes found when your Venus is placed within one of these decans to help you further define your style, and hopefully, have plenty of fun while doing it.
What are the Decans?
Put simply, a decan is a 10º slice of the zodiac. As a circle is made of 360º, there are 36 in total. Each of the twelve signs is 30º and the decans cleanly divide each into three faces (as the decans are also called), the first ranging from 0-10º, the second from 10-20º, the third from 20-30º. Though a part of the astrological tradition since the Ancient Egyptians marked their yearly calendar by the rise and set of the stars, roughly one every ten days, through the decans, they have recently been reinvigorated and translated into use for the contemporary practitioner by Austin Coppock, whose 2014 book “36 Faces: The History,Astrology and Magic of the Decans” distilled their esoteric significations and meanings into concrete, startlingly correct delineations. More recently, Kira Ryberg has released her own book on the 36 decans, which I highly recommend for anyone curious for a more general, comprehensive guide than what is offered within my narrow scope.
I have been studying and using the decans in my work since 2020. I have taken part in decan walks, performed rituals with them and discuss them in virtually every client session I offer and beyond. The reason I use the decans so heavily in my work is because they are not just extremely effective at getting to the heart of someone’s story, they’re fun, mysterious, complex, descriptive.
They not only give three distinct flavors of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc, they have also been primarily passed down in the form of esoteric images, magical significations, planetary rulers and associated deities. Until Coppock sat with their deeper meanings, all we had were these mysterious hints. Though all of Gemini is ruled by Mercury, Jupiter is the decanic ruler of the first decan of the twins. 11th century philosopher Ibn Ezra describes it with this image: “A beautiful woman standing in the air, and she can sew”. 15th century occult writer Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa tells us "it granteth wisdom, and the knowledge of numbers and arts in which there is no profit” while the magical text “The 36 Airs” associatesthis face with the sea nymph Thetys. While these associations hint at the core meaning of this slice of the zodiac, it invites you to journey into them yourself and trust your own interpretation rather than relying on pat answers.
Upon first learning of their specifics through a lecture series offered on Austin Coppock’s website, I had what was akin to a spiritual, psychedelic experience. Suddenly, each sign, which I had primarily associated with a group of key words, became a dynamic, active process. One way you can see the trio of decans within a sign is as a beginning, middle and end to an action. The first tells you how one initiates the journey of Scorpio, for example, the second provides the formula for maintaining that process while the third speaks to how it ends or changes into something else. As I began to compare these decans with those close to me and my own chart, I felt a profound, deep connection to each of them. Each description of a decan where I have significant natal placements felt like a homecoming as well as an initiation into the deeper, complex mysteries contained within my own chart.
For this volume in particular, we are looking at what Venus through the 36 decans tells us about the styles and stories we are drawn to in our clothes and aesthetics. But first we must get into why Venus in the first place.
Why Venus?
Venus, the Lesser Benefic, is the planet of pleasure, beauty, adornment, and naturally, our sense of style. Her designation as “lesser” does not mean her power is diminished but that it lives in the small intimate details: the smell of a rose, the taste of ice cream, the embrace of a lover, and, of course, in the outfit we choose for the day.
As I explain in Volume II:
“Venus is also the planet of values, as in what do we hold as dear and vital in our lives? What would we give up our time or money or attention for, knowing the pay-off will be worth it?…The process of Venus is one of developing one’s taste: it’s not rational necessarily, so following one’s own aesthetic sense is a leap of faith. By following the sensibilities of your Venus you are putting trust into your intuition and giving yourself wholly to a look as an act of devotion, to both yourself and the world, providing you with inspiration. In the realm of fashion, Venus represents what you like. What sort of trends or styles bring you joy and make you feel beautiful?”
We look to Venus to define our fashion sensibilities, choosing the styles, garments and accessories that align with our pleasures and priorities. Beyond the trends or silhouettes we gravitate towards, our Venus can tell whether we dress to impress or to be comfortable, as well as from which style icons we may take inspiration. Though there are many parts of your chart that can dictate your unique fashion sense (and thus many ways of approaching this book) but you can’t go wrong starting with Venus. Going with the principles of remediation and correspondences, attuning your style to match your taste and sense of self is a form of strengthening your Venus, thus bringing more pleasure, connection and creativity into your life. Honing your fashion sense can bring Venus’s gifts into your life in unexpected ways. You may find this process of trusting your subjective tastes more easy if you have a strong Venus, that is in the signs of Libra, Taurus and Pisces, or more difficult if you have a debilitated Venus, i.e. in Aries, Scorpio or Virgo. But, as I will discuss next, dignity or debility expresses itself stylistically in unexpected ways.
My Method
When I first began brainstorming this project, I knew I would be relying heavily on both my own knowledge of the decans as well as the wealth of images associated with each face through history. I also consider the planetary ruler of each decan to be crucial in understand their style. I primarily draw on the Chaldean system for assigning planetary rulers to decans and list each of them under before each essay. Sometimes, I also refer to the Triplicity rulers of the decans, which provides a separate, sometimes overlapping set of planetary rulers, to add more detail. (If you want a deeper explanation of the history and use of the two decanic systems, I encourage to read Kira Ryberg’s guidebook on the decans). Decans that are ruled by the Moon, for example, tend to have a more changeable, mood-based style that veers towards shifting styles and delicate adornment.
To bring these mysterious images and broader details to life in the realm of fashion, I looked up the Venus placements of dozens of famous style icons. But, early on in my exploration, I knew these wouldn’t be enough. Not only are most celebrities dressed by a stylist and wear designer clothing unattainable to most people, we have very little firsthand information on why they dress the way they do or what they value or prioritize in their fashion choices. I knew Iwould have to hear from real people firsthand to truly understand how these decans play out in our style.
So, months ago, I created a style survey. In addition to telling me their Venus placement, I had people answer an array of questions such as how they describe their style, their most-used or favorite garments, their own style icons and what they prioritize when they dress. I even included the option to include pictures illustrating their fashion sense. I was lucky enough to have 180 responses to pull from. From there, I read through each and every entry, isolated common themes, compared them to the decanic knowledge I already possessed and created a unified theory of decanic style.
If you contributed a survey entry to this project, please know I am so grateful to you. I appreciate your style, beauty and creativity immensely. It was truly a joy to witness people talk about how they express themsleves. I hope this volume does justice to the information you shared with me.
Compared to my other volumes, this book is quite straightforward. If you know the decan of your Venus, simply flip to the essay on it to get immediatethemes and inspiration for your own style of dressing. For each decan, I list its planetary ruler and include relevant decanic images and famous natives to give you further illustrations and ideas. Something I like about talking to real people about their relationship to fashion is that such a methodology gets into the lived, imperfect experience of how the average person actually dresses versus the idealized version we often see with the rich and famous.
And though I focused my research and writing on Venus placements, I see no reason you can’t look at the decans for other placements in your chart for further guidance. You may have your Venus in Scorpio I, but if your ascendant is in Libra II, then that essay may be helpful to developing your signature style as well.
May this guide inspire and enliven you; give you new ideas and projects, help you feel seen and, perhaps most importantly, have fun with your fashion.
Styling with the Stars Vol. III is now available for purchase via my website, alongside a Vol. I and II.
If you want to see how your Venus decan works in action, check out my twitter for various threads of style icons and their Venus placement, including Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and Stevie Nicks:
If you want to learn more about my fashion and astrology content, check out this amazing podcast I did with Rose Rising of Shake that Soul. I had such a good time talking with her and look forward to y’all listening.
Until next week,
Love,
Chloe