The image
The image is a sleigh, the runner-borne vehicle made for snow, in a landscape with none: bare ground, perhaps green, and the sleigh useless on it. Nobody is in it and no horse is harnessed. The picture is gently comic and a little melancholy, an object perfectly made for conditions that are not there. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Taurus 8.
Meaning
As a symbol, the sleigh without snow is preparation ahead of its time. The tool is sound; it is the season that is wrong, and the only sensible course is to keep it in good order until conditions change. Our keyword is Out of season, and our keynote reads it in one line: a means fitted for one condition waits uselessly in another. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person has skills, plans or gifts that the present does not call for, and where patience, storage or adaptation is the question. The image shows the wait, and it does not say how long the wait lasts.
By Lynda Hill's practice the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Taurus 7, before it, is the Samaritan woman; Taurus 9, after it, is a Christmas tree hung with ornaments. Read that way, a meeting out of the usual order is followed by a means out of its season, and then by a season's own ritual arriving in full colour, the time the sleigh was waiting for. The degree opposite, Scorpio 8, is moonlight stretched across a lake; as a reading aid it sets a scene that belongs entirely to its hour beside one that does not belong to its own.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 7°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 8°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 7°37′ reads Taurus 8, and so does one at Taurus 7°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 9 after Taurus 7°59′, or back into Taurus 7 before Taurus 7°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 8 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 7, Taurus 9 and Scorpio 8 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 7 and Taurus 9, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 8, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 7°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 8; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 7. 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: A means fitted for one condition waits uselessly in 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 7: Truth in the ordinary the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 9: Festive display the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 8: Reflected peace the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
