A Large Flag on a Flag-Staff, Fixed on the Top of a Very High

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 large flag on a flag-staff, fixed on the top of a very high mountain. Counting from Taurus's start, this is the twentieth degree, placing it in the sign's second decan. Its decan is ruled by Mercury rather than Venus, which colors the degree with something Taurus does not supply on its own.

The narrower term division belongs to Jupiter, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. 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. 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.