The image
The picture is a big park in a city: lawns, avenues of trees, perhaps fountains and monuments, laid out on a grand scale and open to the public. No visitors are described, but the space is made for them. Its dignity comes from planning and long care; such parks are designed once and then kept up for generations. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Taurus 25.
Meaning
As a symbol, the public park is cultivation shared. A community sets land aside, shapes it with care and keeps it open, so that anyone can walk, sit and breathe in an ordered, beautiful place. Our keyword is Shared cultivation, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: a community keeps a space of order and rest for everyone's use. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person contributes to, enjoys or takes care of something held in common, and where beauty and order are offered rather than owned. The park asks only to be used well.
Lynda Hill calls the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Taurus 25 comes Taurus 24, the Plains horseman carrying his trophies of battle; after it comes Taurus 26, a Spaniard serenading the woman he loves. Read by her rule, honours won alone give way to a space shared by all, and the shared space opens onto a private courtship carried out under a window. The degree opposite, Scorpio 25, shows a look inside a body by X-ray; as a reading aid it sets seeing beneath the surface beside a surface laid out to be seen.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 24°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 24°06′ reads Taurus 25, and so does one at Taurus 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 26 after Taurus 24°59′, or back into Taurus 24 before Taurus 24°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 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 24, Taurus 26 and Scorpio 25 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 24 and Taurus 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 24°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 24. 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 community keeps a space of order and rest for everyone's use.
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 24: Marks of victory the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Taurus 26: Courtship as art the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 25: Seeing through the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
