A Boat on a Large Lake, It Might Be a Big River

This degree also carries an image from a different and earlier tradition. Charubel, writing in 1898, described a boat on a large lake, it might be a big river; two men are rowing in it. Counting from Taurus's start, this is the fifth 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. The original session behind this degree took place in 1925, when Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler drew all 360 cards blind, in Balboa Park, San Diego, one degree at a time. Jones printed his results in 1953. The phrasing that most sites and books repeat, though, comes from Dane Rudhyar's 1973 rewrite, An Astrological Mandala, which remains under copyright and is not reproduced here.

Taurus follows Aries by slowing the pace down into something that can be held, built and kept. The point of tracking a degree this closely is not to predict an event but to place it exactly within Taurus's span. Element and quality carry through every degree of Taurus: it is a fixed earth sign, and this degree inherits that basic temperament even as the decan and term add their own note.