The image
The picture is a jeweller's shop: cases of rings, necklaces and stones, polished and set, laid out under good light. No customer is shown and no price; the image is the display itself. Everything in it has been through many hands, from the miner to the cutter to the setter, before it arrived behind the glass. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Taurus 23.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the jewellery shop shows worth that has been brought out by skill and set where it can be seen. A stone in the ground is only a stone; cut, set and shown, it becomes something people recognise as precious. Our keyword is Displayed value, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: worked and polished things of worth are set out for those who can recognise them. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person refines what they have, gives it a setting, and offers it to people able to appreciate it. The picture is about craft and recognition.
By Lynda Hill's rule a degree is read with its Karmic Condition before it and its Quest Degree after it. Before Taurus 23 stands Taurus 22, a white dove above storm-tossed water; after it stands Taurus 24, a Plains horseman carrying the trophies of battle. Read so, a calm spirit gives way to precious things quietly displayed, and that display looks ahead to a rider who shows the marks of his struggles openly. The degree opposite, Scorpio 23, is a little rabbit turning into a fairy; as a reading aid it sets a creature's magical change beside a stone's change through patient work.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 22°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 22°52′ reads Taurus 23, and so does one at Taurus 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 24 after Taurus 22°59′, or back into Taurus 22 before Taurus 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 22, Taurus 24 and Scorpio 23 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 22 and Taurus 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 22°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 22. 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: Worked and polished things of worth are set out for those who can recognise them.
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 22: Peace above turmoil the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 24: Marks of victory the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 23: Transformation upward the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
