A Dark and Sombre Curtain Hanging from a Horizontal Pole

There is an independent image for this degree from 1898, decades before the Sabian set existed. Charubel's book puts it this way: a dark and sombre curtain hanging from a horizontal pole which covers the mouth of a dark cavern in a rock. It falls in the second decan of Taurus (degrees 11 to 20), and is Taurus's fourteenth degree. Its decan is ruled by Mercury rather than Venus, which colors the degree with something Taurus does not supply on its own. The term ruler here is also Mercury, so the finer division agrees with the decan rather than adding a separate voice. Every degree in this set, including this one, comes from a single 1925 sitting: Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler, in Balboa Park, San Diego, drawing 360 blank cards in random order.

Jones's book appeared in 1953, but it is Dane Rudhyar's 1973 reinterpretation, An Astrological Mandala, that is generally quoted today, and its copyrighted wording is withheld from this page. Taurus follows Aries by slowing the pace down into something that can be held, built and kept. 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.