The image
The image is a nurse in uniform with the red cross on a white ground, the emblem of a humanitarian movement that cares for people on every side of a conflict. The picture does not show a ward or a patient; it shows the figure and the sign she wears. The emblem matters because it marks her as neutral: she serves whoever is in front of her.
Meaning
As a symbol, the nurse stands for skill offered without asking who deserves it. The emblem tells everyone that she takes no side, and that neutrality is what lets her reach anyone at all. Our keyword is Impartial care, and our keynote reads it in one line: skill is offered to anyone in need, regardless of side. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person serves others steadily and without favour, where competence and compassion go together, and where the work matters more than the worker. The picture is a symbol of service; it gives no guidance on anyone's body or care, and none is intended.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Taurus 9, before it, is a Christmas tree hung with ornaments; Taurus 11, after it, is a woman sprinkling water over her blooms. Read by her rule, a festival of giving becomes a service of giving, and that service narrows to the small, daily attention a gardener pays to her flowers. Opposite lies Scorpio 10, friends sharing an evening meal; as a reading aid it sets friendship at a table beside care offered to strangers.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 9°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 9°51′ reads Taurus 10, and so does one at Taurus 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 11 after Taurus 9°59′, or back into Taurus 9 before Taurus 9°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 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 9, Taurus 11 and Scorpio 10 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 9 and Taurus 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 9°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 9. 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: Skill is offered to anyone in need, regardless of side.
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.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Taurus 9: Festive display the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 11: Daily nurture the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 10: Bond renewed the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
