The image
The picture is a sky with clouds blown fast by a strong wind, and with them a feeling of haste. Nothing on the ground is described; the image is all movement overhead. The clouds change shape as they go, and none stays long enough to be studied. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Taurus 20.
Meaning
The tradition reads the racing clouds as thoughts and inspirations that arrive and move on quickly. They are light, high and changeable; they bring a sense of urgency, and they do not stay to be pinned down. Our keyword is Swift inspiration, and our keynote reads it in one line: light, fast-moving ideas pass through the mind like high cloud. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place of quick ideas and restless energy, where a person catches what passes and has to choose what to hold. The hurry in the picture is not a warning; it is the pace of a windy day.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Taurus 20 comes Taurus 19, a new continent just formed and solid; after it comes Taurus 21, a fingertip pointing at the open pages of a book. Read by her rule, firm new ground is swept by fast clouds, and the restless sky gives way to a single finger fixing one place on a page, motion followed by focus. The degree opposite, Scorpio 20, shows a woman pulling back a pair of dark curtains; as a reading aid it sets a deliberate revealing beside this degree's ideas that come and go of their own accord.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 19°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 19°01′ reads Taurus 20, and so does one at Taurus 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 21 after Taurus 19°59′, or back into Taurus 19 before Taurus 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 19, Taurus 21 and Scorpio 20 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 19 and Taurus 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 19. 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: Light, fast-moving ideas pass through the mind like high cloud.
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 19: New ground the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 21: Pointing out the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 20: Drawing back the curtains the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
