A Natural Well Surrounded with Moss, Low Shrubs, and Briars

The wording that circulates for this cycle of 360 degree symbols traces to a 1925 session in Balboa Park, San Diego, where Marc Edmund Jones worked with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler, drawing 360 blank cards in random order while she described what came to her for each one. Jones published the results in 1953. The phrasing now most widely read is not his; it is Dane Rudhyar's, who reworked the material into his own interpretive language for An Astrological Mandala in 1973, and that 1973 text remains under copyright, so it is not reproduced here.

Counting from Taurus's start, this is the fifteenth 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. One further source stands apart from the Jones and Rudhyar material entirely. Charubel's 1898 degree symbols, compiled well before Balboa Park, give this degree a natural well surrounded with moss, low shrubs, and briars. The water is clear as crystal and cold as ice. The immediate locality is dry and barren. As a fixed earth sign, Taurus values what endures over what merely begins, and prizes steadiness above speed. Taken together, the position, the decan, and the old image give this degree a specific character within Taurus rather than a generic one.