The image
The picture is a peacock with its tail spread on a lawn of great age, the kind found at an old estate, close-cut and smooth after generations of care. The bird is all colour and movement; the lawn is quiet, green and long established. Each sets the other off. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Taurus 30.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the peacock is display, and the old lawn is endurance. Brilliance on its own can look vain; set against something that has lasted, it becomes part of a larger beauty, the bright moment shown on a ground that time has made. Our keyword is Display on old ground, and our keynote reads it in one line: splendour shows itself against the dignity of what has lasted. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person's gifts or pride are shown within a tradition, a family or an institution that gives them meaning. Closing Taurus, the image gathers the sign's pleasure in beautiful, solid things.
Lynda Hill reads a degree with its Karmic Condition, the degree before, and its Quest Degree, the degree after. The one before is Taurus 29, two shoemakers at their workbench; the one after is Gemini 1, a boat with a glass floor on calm water, the first image of the next sign. By her rule humble work gives way to splendid display, and display looks ahead to quiet observation of what lies beneath a surface. Opposite stands Scorpio 30, a Halloween clown in motley; as a reading aid it sets a costume put on for one night beside plumage that grows.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Taurus 29°00′ up to, but not including, Taurus 30°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Taurus 29°11′ reads Taurus 30, and so does one at Taurus 29°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 1 after Taurus 29°59′, or back into Taurus 29 before Taurus 29°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 30 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 29, Gemini 1 and Scorpio 30 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 29 and Gemini 1, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Scorpio 30, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Taurus 29°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Taurus 30; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 29. 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: Splendour shows itself against the dignity of what has lasted.
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 29: Practical partnership the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 1: Seeing beneath the surface the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Scorpio 30: Licensed folly the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Taurus in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
