A Ram Standing Alone, Looking Towards a Flock of Sheep

Counting from Taurus's start, this is the fourth 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. As a fixed earth sign, Taurus values what endures over what merely begins, and prizes steadiness above speed. Before Jones and Wheeler ever met, the Welsh astrologer Charubel had already published a complete set of 360 degree images in 1898.

For this degree, his book pictures a ram standing alone, looking towards a flock of sheep in the distance. This is one of the 360 degree images that Marc Edmund Jones obtained in 1925 by drawing blank cards, shuffled at random, while the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described her impressions in Balboa Park, San Diego. Jones's own account followed in 1953, but the version generally read today is Dane Rudhyar's, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala; that later text is under copyright until 2069 and is withheld from this page rather than quoted. None of this is meant as prophecy; it is a way of describing where, precisely, this degree sits inside Taurus's larger pattern.