Sabian Symbol Reading

Every one of the three hundred and sixty degrees of the zodiac carries its own Sabian image, a symbol assigned to that single degree rather than to the thirty degree sign it falls within. A reading finds the image standing over the sun, the moon, or another chosen point, and reads that point through the picture assigned to its exact degree.

History

The full set of 360 symbols was produced in San Diego in 1925 in a single working session between the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler: Wheeler gave a spontaneous image for each of the 360 degrees while Jones recorded them, a method placing the origin of the symbols in one deliberately documented sitting rather than in an older textual tradition the way most of this atlas's other divinatory vocabularies are. The set reached its widest astrological audience through a later astrologer, Dane Rudhyar, whose 1936 book "An Astrological Mandala" gave each of the 360 raw images an extended interpretive commentary, and it is chiefly Rudhyar's elaboration, more than Jones and Wheeler's original bare images, that most present day Sabian symbol material draws on.

How A Reading Is Constructed

A reading finds the exact degree of a chosen chart point, the sun, the moon or another point, and looks up the single Sabian image assigned to that one degree out of 360, reading the chart through that image's traditional Rudhyar era commentary. Because each of the 360 images is unique to its own degree, two charts sharing a sign can still receive entirely different symbol readings if their exact degrees differ.

Where To Read More

• Aries 1Zodiac DegreeOne of the 360 Sabian symbols, produced by Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler in 1925, one image per degree of the zodiac.
• Pisces 30Zodiac DegreeA second Sabian symbol, showing a different degree's image.