Sabian Symbols are 360 visual images corresponding to each degree of the zodiac, channeled in 1925 by Elsie Wheeler and astrologer Marc Edmund Jones. Each symbol is an archetypal scene from the collective unconscious — not a literal prediction, but a mythic image describing the soul's imprint at birth. the tropical degree of the Sun, Moon and Ascendant and maps each to its corresponding Sabian Symbol. The interpretation covers all three symbols as an archetypal portrait — what each image says about your identity, emotions and the first impression you make on the world.
Where it comes from
The three hundred and sixty Sabian symbols were produced in San Diego in 1925 in a single sitting. The astrologer Marc Edmund Jones shuffled cards numbered for every degree of the zodiac and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler, who was severely disabled and had no astrological training, described an image for each one as it was handed to her. Dane Rudhyar reworked the wording in the 1970s and it is his version that most modern readings use.
How the method works
Each degree of the tropical zodiac has one symbol, and a planet standing anywhere inside that degree takes it. The convention is to round upward: a Sun at 14°02' Leo takes the symbol for the fifteenth degree of Leo, not the fourteenth. The images are not predictions and are not meant to be read literally — a burning candle, a woman drawing back two dark curtains, an ox cart on a road. They are treated as a picture the mind can turn over, the way a dream is worked with, and the reading comes from what the scene does rather than from a fixed dictionary meaning.
What a reading covers
A reading gives the Sabian symbol for your Sun, Moon and Ascendant, the exact degree each falls in, and a reading of the three images together as one portrait — what each scene says about identity, emotional life and the way you first meet the world.
Common questions
- Why does my symbol differ from another site's?
- Almost always because of the rounding rule, or because the other site uses the original Jones wording rather than Rudhyar's. Check which degree number is being quoted.
- Do I need an exact birth time?
- For the Sun and Moon, a date is often enough to land in the right degree, though the Moon moves half a degree an hour. The Ascendant changes degree every four minutes, so that one needs a real time.
- What if the image makes no sense for me?
- That is the normal starting point. The symbols are deliberately odd and the work is in what the image suggests, not in forcing it to match a life event.