The image
The image is a continent, newly come into being and already solid: land risen from the sea, or built up over ages, now firm enough to stand on. It is shown as complete, not in the making. No people live on it yet; it is ground waiting for whatever comes. The scale of the picture is unlike almost any other in Taurus.
Meaning
As a symbol, a new continent is a whole new field of life made firm. What was liquid, shifting or unformed has set into a shape that can bear weight and be explored. Our keyword is New ground, and our keynote reads it in one line: a whole new field of experience emerges from what was formless. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person finds or makes new territory, in work, understanding or circumstance, and then has the task of settling it. The image shows the land, not its future; the exploring is left to the reader.
Lynda Hill reads a degree beside the one before, her Karmic Condition, and the one after, her Quest Degree. Taurus 18, before it, is the woman at a window holding out her bag; Taurus 20, after it, is clouds driven by the wind and a sense of hurry. By her rule a small private thing brought into the open is followed by a whole land brought into being, and the solid land by fast clouds racing over it. Opposite lies Scorpio 19, a parrot that listens and then repeats what it heard; as a reading aid it sets copying the known beside the making of something new.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 18°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 18°24′ reads Taurus 19, and so does one at Taurus 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 20 after Taurus 18°59′, or back into Taurus 18 before Taurus 18°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 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 18, Taurus 20 and Scorpio 19 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 18 and Taurus 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 18°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 18. 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: A whole new field of experience emerges from what was formless.
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 18: Holding out the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 20: Swift inspiration the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 19: Imitation the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
