The image
The picture is an old man attempting to reveal the Mysteries, the hidden teachings of the old initiatory religions, and failing. The image does not say why: whether his listeners are not ready, whether the teaching cannot be put into words, or whether he has lost the thread. It shows effort, age and a knowledge that refuses to come out.
Meaning
The tradition reads the old man as the limit of teaching. Some understanding comes only through experience, and no explanation can give it to someone who has not lived it; age and knowledge are not enough on their own. Our keyword is Wisdom without listeners, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: what one has learned cannot be passed on unless others are ready. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where a person holds insight that is hard to share, or where the wish to explain outruns other people's readiness to hear. The picture is not a failure of the man so much as of the moment.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Taurus 16 stands Taurus 15, the man wrapped up warmly in a jaunty hat; after it stands Taurus 17, swords fighting against torches. By her reading, outward confidence is followed by an inward knowledge that cannot be spoken, and the struggle to speak it looks toward a contest between force and light. Opposite is Scorpio 16, a smile spreading across a girl's face; as a reading aid it sets a simple, immediate understanding beside the old man's hard-won one that finds no way out.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 15°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 16°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 15°33′ reads Taurus 16, and so does one at Taurus 15°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 17 after Taurus 15°59′, or back into Taurus 15 before Taurus 15°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 16 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 15, Taurus 17 and Scorpio 16 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 15 and Taurus 17, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 16, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 15°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 16; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 15. 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: What one has learned cannot be passed on unless others are ready.
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 15: Style in adversity the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 17: Force versus light the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 16: Spontaneous warmth the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
