A Man Playing on a Violin

Charubel, the pen name of the Welsh astrologer John Thomas, catalogued an image for every degree in 1898. His entry for this one describes a man playing on a violin. Counting from Libra's start, this is the second degree, placing it in the sign's first decan. Its decan is ruled by Moon rather than Venus, which colors the degree with something Libra does not supply on its own. The narrower term division belongs to Saturn, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan.

The degree symbols themselves date to 1925, when Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler sat in Balboa Park, San Diego, and drew all 360 blank cards in random sequence so that no degree's image could be planned in advance. Jones published his findings in 1953, yet the reading in general circulation since is Dane Rudhyar's 1973 restatement, not Jones's own words, and Rudhyar's text is still in copyright and is not quoted on this page. Libra opens the second half of the zodiac and turns air's exchange into a question of balance between two parties. What a degree reading offers here is orientation rather than forecast, a way of naming exactly where in Libra's cycle a person or moment sits. Element and quality carry through every degree of Libra: it is a cardinal air sign, and this degree inherits that basic temperament even as the decan and term add their own note.