Sagittarius I: The “Quest” Begins…

In the video below, I explore Sagittarius I, the first decan of Sagittarius—a place of swift movement, clarity of purpose, and the beginning of a bold new quest. People with points or placements here often feel propelled by an inner vision, eager to move out into the world with speed, enthusiasm, and intention. Ruled by Jupiter and Mercury, this decan fuses expansion with intelligence, blending the optimism of Jupiter with Mercury’s sharp, agile mind. The result is a bright, dynamic energy that seeks direction, meaning, and momentum—a drive to set plans into motion and pursue one’s mission with confidence and purpose.

At its core, Sagittarius I is about decisive forward movement: taking an inspired idea and turning it into clear, deliberate action. Linked to the Eight of Wands in the tarot, this decan expresses pure motion—unhindered, unambiguous, and ready to launch. In the Rider–Waite image, wands streak across an open sky, symbolizing unobstructed progress, while the Thoth card, titled Swiftness, emphasizes Mercury’s rapid precision and Jupiter’s blessing of opportunity. This is the moment in the larger Sagittarian quest when excitement and vision align, when instinct becomes intention, and when momentum gathers in a way that feels almost electric. The shift from Netzach to Hod on the Tree of Life reinforces this movement: from raw desire and feeling into structure, articulation, and clarity.

In the video, I look at ancient descriptions from Ibn Ezra, the Picatrix, and Agrippa, all of which emphasize heat, speed, boldness, and directed force—qualities that echo across the symbolism of this decan. I also explore the chart of Bruce Lee, whose rising degree and Sun both fall in Sagittarius I. His lightning‑fast physicality, philosophical depth, and relentless refinement of technique embody this decan’s fusion of Jupiterian vision and Mercurial precision. From martial mastery to intellectual discipline, he illustrates the essence of Sagittarius I: the power of a clear path, the courage to pursue it, and the momentum that carries us forward when inspiration and intention unite.

Transcript (Revised)

Hi, this is Cathy Gnatek. I'm continuing my series on the 36 sections of the zodiac today with Sagittarius I, the first 10 degrees of Sagittarius.

So we know that Sagittarius is a fire sign ruled by Jupiter. It's got this big, expansive quality to it. I'm going to get into some of that at the beginning of the video to give you some grounding in the meaning of Sagittarius. But where we're really going to hone in today is on those first 10 degrees of the sign. So if you have planets or points there, this video is for you to help you deepen your understanding of those energies in your life.

We're going to look at the tarot card, the Eight of Cups, that's associated with this decan, as well as some ancient esoteric descriptions of it. And I'll look at the Kabbalah, the sephira Hod, and how that relates to it. And then I have a great example. Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist, has his rising degree here. You're going to see how that's a really great example of the energy. I hope you enjoy the video. If you do, it'd be great if you could like and subscribe. I'm trying to grow my channel right now, and I really appreciate it.

So let's talk first about the sign of Sagittarius itself. Let me go back to the first slide. There we go.

Sagittarius, you see there at the top, the image that's often associated with the sign, and that's the centaur, half man and half horse. And right away you see the mutable quality, the flexible quality of the energy of this sign. All the mutable signs have a duality about them. And when I think of Sagittarius, I always think of the quest. We're going to really see that unfolding as we go through Sagittarius I, II, and III, the three different decans of the sign, that there's an evolution of the movement of the quest.

And when I think of the quest, I think of the quest for the Holy Grail. There's something about Sagittarius where it likes to grapple with the big questions of life and try to understand in a unified way the meaning of life. And we see also with Sagittarius, it's ruled by this planet Jupiter, which is a planet that has to do with meaning-making. It's also a planet that has to do with wisdom, expansion, and abundance. It's the energy that supports us and encourages us to grow. It's an energy that allows us to move out into the world in a positive way and provides opportunities.

And then we have Sagittarius as a fire sign. It's the last of the three fire signs. We have Aries and then Leo and now Sagittarius. All of the last elements of a sign have to do with the world at large. The first element tends to have to do with us personally, so Aries. The second element has to do with us in connection with another, so that's Leo. But then we get to Sagittarius, and it's more about the world at large.

So again, Sagittarius folks can sometimes be curious about the meaning of life and try to bring that energy out to the world for the greater good. There's an enthusiasm and inspiration about all of the fire signs. And then, of course, we already talked about the mutability.

So when we move to the particular decan and what differentiates this part of Sagittarius, it's the decanic rulers. Basically, that's just this idea that in addition to Jupiter ruling the whole sign, for this particular 10 degrees we have two other rulers. And here we have Jupiter under the triplicity system, so it's a Jupiter–Jupiter decan. We already talked about Jupiter. But the additional ruler is Mercury.

Mercury was Hermes in the Greek pantheon, the messenger to the gods. Mercury is the swiftest planet. We're going to see that energy in this particular part of the zodiac. I'll tell you about that in a second. Mercury also has a trickster quality, this flexibility of mind. It's about the intellect. People with Mercury really strong in their chart tend to be good at languages, games, business—anything that requires order and analysis.

And so when I put that together for this part of the zodiac, you can already see, without looking at the tarot card—which I'll show you in a second—that something about this decan is going to have to do with expansive speed, like moving out in the world in a really quick way, because we have Jupiter energy expanding and Mercury wanting to move swiftly. Then we also have the Mercury energy that is about the intellect and the mind and analysis.

We're going to see this with Bruce Lee, who was not only quick physically, but who also brought philosophy—that Jupiter quality—as well as thinking and analysis to perfecting his martial arts. We're really going to see him as an example of this particular energy, which likes to focus and think and move forward quickly.

That's the vibe of this part of the zodiac. We see this exemplified even more deeply in the Eight of Wands in the Rider–Waite deck, which is associated with this part of the zodiac. Here we see the image of eight wands. They're flying diagonally across this clear sky, open landscape below, and there's nobody there. This is the one tarot card that doesn't have any figures in it, which is interesting. It's just about movement and speed, and there's an airy, spacious quality to the motion, as if the wands have already been released and they're just moving forward.

8 of Wands, Rider-Waite Tarot

You get this card in a tarot reading, depending on the cards that surround it, and it can be like: the way is clear, go forward.

And then I also wanted to bring in the Thoth deck because it's literally called Swiftness. You get that swift Mercury energy. You get the Jupiter vibe as well with that rainbow over the top—the blessing that comes with Jupiter energy oftentimes, the opportunities. And we see again these eight wands; they're kind of stylized a little bit differently in this particular card, but you see the electric energy of movement outward and the rapidity and clarity of thought that can come with people who have points or planets in this part of the decan. They can have this capacity to see the way forward on what their vision is for the quest.

Now, they run into a little trouble when we get to the second and third decan of Sagittarius, which is what always happens when we have a quest. We're so excited at the beginning of it—this Eight of Cups energy. We're going to move out, we're going to do that thing. And then, when we're in the middle of the quest, that's when we run into the challenges that may befall us as we try to move forward. But in general, this movement forward with a vision is the energy of this first decan.

The ancient texts associated with this decan all emphasized the same idea of this directed force. It's got heat and expansion—that Jupiterian quality—and decisive action. They portray a decan characterized by swift movement and clarity of purpose. All the things I've said already are repeated, so we get a real confirmation of an understanding of what this part of the zodiac is about.

For Ibn Ezra, he describes this decan as, “a naked man from his head down to his navel. It is the figure of a man, and from the navel down it is the shape of a horse. In his hand, a bow and arrows, and he is shouting.” This is a straight-up description of the sign itself, the centaur. But we also see that shouting energy, the movement out of the Mercury.

And then if we look at the Picatrix, it describes this decan as “three bodies of men, of which one is yellow, another white, but the third red. And this is a face of heat, weight, and of fructifying in fields and on lands of sustaining and dividing.” This is ancient language, obviously. So we get the vibe.

Fructifying basically just means not only abundance, but that you plant the fields and they grow and things work out for you. So there's a fertility that goes along with the energy of Jupiter, which brings opportunity and expansion. We see that there.

And lastly, Agrippa describes this decan as “a man armed with a coat of mail and holding a naked sword in his hand. The operation of this is for boldness, militarism, and freedom.” Now here we have a little bit of an added vibe that we haven't seen in the last discussion.

And that is, you know, we talk about directed action and swiftness, but also there's an assertive quality. Sagittarius is a masculine sign. All the fire signs are. And so there is a movement outward. And we see this with Bruce Lee. Not only was he a martial artist, but he used different weapons, including nunchucks and things like poles in his work. So we see that you can add in a layer of a desire to move forward in a really assertive way as part of this decan, not just everything flowing, but also that you have the will yourself to implement your quest as part of this decan.

And then we look at the Qabbalah, the Tree of Life, this mystical diagram that represents the descent of divine inspiration into the material world. You see there the lightning flash in yellow that traces the flow of creative energy from divine source, Kether at the top, down to Malkuth, the physical world. So part of what the Tree of Life shows is how life unfolds for us, how we manifest things.

Tree of Life, Heremtic Qabbalah

We get an inspiration and then we manifest it in the real world. And each of the different sephirot, which are those little circles there, relate to where we are on the path. And so there's an association we can draw here when we take the number of the tarot card that’s associated with the sephira. And here we have the number eight. And that helps us flesh out even more what the energy is or can be associated with the tarot card as well as the decan. That was a long sentence.

So the number eight on the Tree of Life corresponds to the sephira Hod on the Pillar of Form. There are two pillars. And moving from Netzach, the number seven—which we just saw with the Seven of Cups, which was Scorpio—and now we're moving to the Eight of Wands, Sagittarius.

This describes a shift from raw feeling and instinct, which the sevens carry, to actually moving into the world and bringing your project forward, making that choice. If you go back and look at the Scorpio III video, you saw that something about it was about imagining different possibilities, and now we're moving into the eight and we're stepping into something. And it's a movement from raw feeling and instinct to clarity, structure, and deliberate thought. We're giving form at this point.

Netzach is the realm of emotion, desire, intuition, and momentum. Its energy is expressive, passionate, unshaped form. Like I said, look at the Scorpio III video. Hod, on the other hand, takes that energy and refines it, giving it form, language, analysis, and precision. Where the seven says, I feel, I want, I search forward, the eight says, I understand, I organize, I articulate. Again, this energy of this decan moves in that direction.

We see this clearly in Bruce Lee’s chart, which I think is fascinating because he has his rising degree here, as well as his Sun—his light—in this first decan of the zodiac.

When we were looking at the tarot card associated with this decan, the Thoth card is actually called Swiftness. And when I read Bruce Lee’s biography, I was just blown away by the fact not only of how quick he was and how that fits with this decan, but that one of the things that happened in the 60s, because of the way cameras or videos worked—they were slower than they are now—the videographers actually couldn’t capture his moves as quickly as he could do his martial arts. They would turn out blurry or you couldn’t even see them. And so he had to actually slow down his movement when he was doing videos so they could capture what it was.

So that’s just, again, astrology always blows my mind. In general, his biography: he was a martial artist. I think most folks know he made a number of movies as well, and he also developed his own martial art form, the Tao of Jeet Kune Do—apologies if I did not pronounce that correctly—and he basically took a bunch of different types of martial arts, as well as boxing and fencing, and he put them all together to create his own form. That shows the mutability in part of Sagittarius energy.

And he was also known for his lightning-fast moves. There's the description I just gave you. But he was not only fast, he was also philosophically trained and deeply analytical and obsessed with refining techniques.

So let's talk about the philosophically trained. That really fits with the Jupiter energy, as well as the Mercury energy of this decan. Jupiter is about grappling with those big questions, and Mercury is about trying to articulate or communicate.

I bring this quote in, in part, because of that Mercury and Hod energy. Mercury rules this decan as well, so it’s about the intellect. He worked so hard to refine his technique. There are all kinds of journals and diagrams he had describing the different techniques and how he practiced and refined them. Refining is a very Mercury-type energy. Wanting to get it right is also a Mercury-type energy.

And then Hod is about making something—moving from the creative into the world in a more concrete way.

So I love this example of Bruce Lee. Thank you for watching. I really appreciate it. And I’ll see you in 10 days or so for Sagittarius II. And like and subscribe if you enjoyed the content. Thanks again.