The image
The image is an electrical storm: dark cloud, flashes of lightning, the air charged and then released. No place or people are shown, only the weather at its most violent and brief. Lightning is the sudden balancing of a charge that has built between cloud and ground. Before 10 October 2026 our table carried another line at this degree, a picture of a white butterfly, which is not the Sabian image of any degree; it was replaced.
Meaning
The tradition reads the storm as release after pressure. Heat and moisture gather until the atmosphere can hold no more, and then the tension goes in flashes and thunder, after which the air is clearer. Our keyword is Charged release, and our keynote puts it in one sentence: tension in the atmosphere breaks in sudden, dramatic discharge. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where feeling or energy builds and then breaks, often suddenly, and where the break clears the ground. The picture describes weather, not damage; it shows the sky after a long, heavy afternoon finally letting go.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Taurus 1, before it, is clean water running down from the mountains; Taurus 3, after it, is a flight of stairs climbing to a lawn where clover flowers. So by her rule the pure stream gives way to a storm, and the storm to an easy climb onto green ground, calm after the weather has passed. The degree opposite, Scorpio 2, is perfume running from a smashed bottle; as a reading aid it sets a fragrance released by breaking beside a charge released by lightning.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 1°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 1°55′ reads Taurus 2, and so does one at Taurus 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 3 after Taurus 1°59′, or back into Taurus 1 before Taurus 1°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Taurus 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 1, Taurus 3 and Scorpio 2 beside it.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Where the image comes from
- Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced
- Degree before and after
- Taurus 1 and Taurus 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 1°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 1. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed
- Our table before 10 October 2026
- Carried "A beautiful white butterfly.", which is not the Sabian image of any degree; corrected on 10 October 2026 sourced
How the schools read it
- Marc Edmund Jones (1953)
- Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.
- Dane Rudhyar (1973)
- Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.
- Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)
- Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.
- The Sabian Assembly
- Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.
- EsoTerrier
- Our keynote: Tension in the atmosphere breaks in sudden, dramatic discharge.
Claims about it
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The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.
falseWhat the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.
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Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.
falseWhat the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.
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Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.
falseWhat the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.
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Our table before 10 October 2026 gave this degree its own image.
falseWhat the record shows: Carried "A beautiful white butterfly.", which is not the Sabian image of any degree. Found against the Sabian Assembly's list and fixed on 10 October 2026.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Taurus 1: Pure source the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 3: Easy ascent the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 2: Spilled fragrance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
