Two Swords Forming a Cross Lying on the Ground, and a Man

Charubel, the pen name of the Welsh astrologer John Thomas, catalogued an image for every degree in 1898. His entry for this one describes two swords forming a cross lying on the ground, and a man standing on them with a sceptre pointing heavenward. Counting from Taurus's start, this is the eighth degree, placing it in the sign's first decan. Its decan is ruled by Venus, Taurus's own planet, reinforcing rather than complicating the sign's usual character. The term ruler here is also Venus, so the finer division agrees with the decan rather than adding a separate voice. Behind every one of these 360 degrees sits the same 1925 event: Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler in Balboa Park, San Diego, drawing blank cards in random order and setting down what she saw. Jones's book came out in 1953.

What is usually quoted today, however, is Dane Rudhyar's later reworking, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala, a copyrighted text this page does not reproduce. As a fixed earth sign, Taurus values what endures over what merely begins, and prizes steadiness above speed. What a degree reading offers here is orientation rather than forecast, a way of naming exactly where in Taurus's cycle a person or moment sits.