Sabian Symbols

The Sabian symbols are a set of three hundred and sixty short images, one for each degree of the zodiac, used in modern astrology to give a finer, more pictorial reading of a chart than the signs and decans alone allow. A symbol such as "a woman rises from water, a seal embraces her" is attached to a single degree and read for the planet or point that falls there.

They were taken down in San Diego in 1925 by the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones from the medium Elsie Wheeler, who is said to have produced all three hundred and sixty in a single sitting. Jones published them in 1953, and Dane Rudhyar later rewrote the images and gave them a developmental interpretation.

The Sabian symbols belong wholly to twentieth-century astrology, though they draw on an older tradition of degree symbolism reaching back through several earlier sets. Their interest lies in how a fixed, evocative image for each degree is used interpretively, and in the two influential versions, Jones's and Rudhyar's, that circulate.

The atlas treats the symbols as a modern system with a datable origin, describing how they are used and giving the images. They sit within the degree-level tools of Western astrology alongside the decans.