The image
The image is a man dressed for bad weather, muffled in a coat and scarf, but crowned with a tall silk hat set at a cheerful angle. The two halves of his outfit pull in different directions: one is all sense, the other all dash. No weather is shown, but the clothes imply it. In 1925 the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler saw this picture for an unseen card, the one marked Taurus 15.
Meaning
As a symbol, the man shows that being protected need not mean being dull. He meets the cold sensibly and still carries himself with a touch of pride and fun. Our keyword is Style in adversity, and our keynote reads it in one line: flair and protection together let one face bad weather with dignity. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person keeps their bearing in difficult conditions, where good spirits and good sense go together, and where how one appears is part of how one copes. The image is light, and the lightness is part of its meaning.
After Lynda Hill, the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Before Taurus 15 is Taurus 14, children playing near shellfish on a shore; after it is Taurus 16, an elderly man who tries and fails to lay the Mysteries bare. Read by her rule, unprotected play on a beach gives way to a well-wrapped adult, and the adult's confidence looks ahead to an old man whose knowledge finds no takers. The degree opposite, Scorpio 15, shows five heaps of sand with children playing round them; as a reading aid it sets carefree play in a sandpit beside a grown man braced for the weather.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 14°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 14°56′ reads Taurus 15, and so does one at Taurus 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 16 after Taurus 14°59′, or back into Taurus 14 before Taurus 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 14, Taurus 16 and Scorpio 15 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 14 and Taurus 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 14°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 14. 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: Flair and protection together let one face bad weather with dignity.
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 14: Innocence beside instinct the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 16: Wisdom without listeners the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 15: Playing with form the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
