The image
A street of shops, and people standing at the glass to look at what is displayed inside. No one is shown going in; the picture is of the window and the gaze. Shop windows are arranged to be looked at, goods placed in the light so that a passer-by slows down. The image keeps to that moment of looking. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Taurus 12.
Meaning
As a symbol, window-shopping is the stage of desire before any decision. A person sees what is on offer, compares, imagines having it, and is still free to walk on. Our keyword is Looking before choosing, and our keynote reads it in one line: looking at what is on offer comes before choosing or buying. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person takes in options, weighs what appeals and forms tastes, and where the looking itself can be a pleasure. The picture judges neither the window nor the people; it shows a pause on a busy street.
By Lynda Hill's rule, the degree before is a placement's Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Taurus 12 is Taurus 11, a woman sprinkling water over her blooms; after it is Taurus 13, a man busy with bags and cases. Read so, private tending gives way to public looking, and looking to the practical work of carrying things from place to place. Opposite stands Scorpio 12, a formal dance at an embassy; as a reading aid it sets a polished social display beside the open, ordinary display of a shop front.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 11°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 11°05′ reads Taurus 12, and so does one at Taurus 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 13 after Taurus 11°59′, or back into Taurus 11 before Taurus 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 11, Taurus 13 and Scorpio 12 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 11 and Taurus 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 11°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 11. 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: Looking at what is on offer comes before choosing or buying.
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 11: Daily nurture the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 13: Handling the load the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 12: Formal diplomacy the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
