The image
The picture is close and simple: a book lies open, and a fingertip rests on its pages, marking one spot. Whose finger it is, what the book is and which line is chosen are left unsaid. The whole image narrows to that point of contact between a hand and a text, the gesture of a reader, a teacher or someone showing another where to look.
Meaning
As a symbol, the pointing finger is attention made visible. Out of everything on a page one place is chosen, and the choosing is itself an act of meaning: this, here, is what counts now. Our keyword is Pointing out, and our keynote reads it in one line: attention is directed to one place on the page. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person picks out the relevant detail, teaches by showing, or is shown where to look by someone else. The image does not say whether the line pointed to is the right one; it shows the act of choosing it.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the one after its Quest Degree. Before Taurus 21 is Taurus 20, clouds driven by the wind and a sense of hurry; after it is Taurus 22, a white dove above storm-tossed water. So by her rule a sky of quick, passing ideas comes to rest on one marked line, and the focused mind looks ahead to a calm spirit flying over turmoil. The degree opposite, Scorpio 21, shows a soldier neglecting his post; as a reading aid it sets attention withdrawn from a duty beside attention fixed on a single point.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 20°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 21°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 20°38′ reads Taurus 21, and so does one at Taurus 20°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 22 after Taurus 20°59′, or back into Taurus 20 before Taurus 20°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 21 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 20, Taurus 22 and Scorpio 21 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 20 and Taurus 22, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 21, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 20°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 21; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 20. 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: Attention is directed to one place on the page.
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 20: Swift inspiration the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 22: Peace above turmoil the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 21: Duty neglected the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
