The image
The image is a white dove in flight over a stormy sea, the waves high and broken beneath it. The bird is not caught in the storm; it is above it, and its whiteness stands out against the dark water. A dove carries old associations of peace and of the bird that flew over the flood in the Genesis story, though the picture names no ark.
Meaning
The tradition reads the dove as peace or spirit holding steady over disturbance. The storm is real, but the bird does not have to enter it; it keeps a course of its own above the waves. Our keyword is Peace above turmoil, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: spirit keeps its course over disturbance it does not have to enter. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person can stay composed in agitated surroundings, or where calm is something chosen and kept. The picture does not make the sea any quieter; it shows that there is space above it.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before as the Karmic Condition and the degree after as the Quest Degree. The one before is Taurus 21, a fingertip pointing at a place on the pages of an open book; the one after is Taurus 23, a shop that sells jewellery. Read by her rule, a mind fixed on one point rises into a calm above the storm, and the calm descends to a quiet display of precious, finished things. Opposite lies Scorpio 22, duck hunters setting off; as a reading aid it sets birds sought by people on the water beside a bird left free above it.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 21°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 22°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 21°15′ reads Taurus 22, and so does one at Taurus 21°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 23 after Taurus 21°59′, or back into Taurus 21 before Taurus 21°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 22 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 21, Taurus 23 and Scorpio 22 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 21 and Taurus 23, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 22, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 21°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 22; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 21. 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: Spirit keeps its course over disturbance it does not have to enter.
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 21: Pointing out the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 23: Displayed value the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 22: Pursuit the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
