The image
The picture is a woman whose husband has gone, standing at the side of a fresh grave. The earth is newly turned; the moment is close to the loss. No mourners, words or weather are given, only the woman and the opening in the ground. The image is one of the most sober in Taurus, and we describe it as a picture and nothing more.
Meaning
The tradition reads the widow at the grave as the moment when one way of living ends and another has to begin. Grief is not only sorrow; it also opens a person to a changed life that was not chosen. Our keyword is Grief that opens, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: loss confronts a person with the end of one life and the start of another. In a chart the tradition would take a placement here as a place where endings, mourning or letting go have a part, and where something new is found on the far side of them. The picture is about meaning, not events.
Lynda Hill calls the degree before a placement the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Before Taurus 5 is Taurus 4, the pot of gold beneath a rainbow; after it is Taurus 6, workers raising a bridge over a ravine. Read by her rule, bright hope meets the hard fact of an ending, and the ending leads to the labour of spanning a gap. Across the circle lies Scorpio 5, a coast of huge rocks; as a reading aid it sets the endurance of stone against the sea beside a person standing firm at a loss.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 4°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 5°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 4°46′ reads Taurus 5, and so does one at Taurus 4°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 6 after Taurus 4°59′, or back into Taurus 4 before Taurus 4°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 5 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 4, Taurus 6 and Scorpio 5 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 4 and Taurus 6, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 5, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 4°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 5; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 4. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed
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: Loss confronts a person with the end of one life and the start of another.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Taurus 4: Promised reward the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 6: Spanning the gap the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 5: Resistance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
