The image
A woman leans from a window and holds a bag out into the open air. The picture does not say what the bag contains or why she holds it out: to shake it, to air it, to hand it down, or to show it. The gesture moves something from inside the house to the outside. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Taurus 18.
Meaning
The tradition reads the bag held out of the window as private things made visible. What was kept indoors is put into the light and the air, whether to be cleaned, given or simply looked at. Our keyword is Holding out, and our keynote reads it in one line: something kept close is held out where others can see it. In a chart a placement here could be read as a place where a person airs what they hold, shares their resources or opens a private matter to view, and where the gesture itself changes how the thing is seen. The picture leaves the bag closed; what is in it is the reader's question.
Lynda Hill calls the degree before the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Before Taurus 18 is Taurus 17, swords fighting against torches; after it is Taurus 19, a new continent just formed and solid. Read so, a contest of powers gives way to a small domestic gesture, and the gesture of bringing something out leads toward a whole new ground rising into view. The degree opposite, Scorpio 18, is a stand of trees in their full autumn colours; as a reading aid it sets a season showing all it has beside one woman showing one bag.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 17°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 17°47′ reads Taurus 18, and so does one at Taurus 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 19 after Taurus 17°59′, or back into Taurus 17 before Taurus 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 17, Taurus 19 and Scorpio 18 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 17 and Taurus 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 17°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 17. 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: Something kept close is held out where others can see it.
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 17: Force versus light the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 19: New ground the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 18: Ripened splendour the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
