Sabian Symbols

Definition

The Sabian Symbols are a set of 360 short symbolic images — one for each whole degree of the zodiac. They were produced in a single 1925 San Diego session, where astrologer Marc Edmund Jones drew degree cards at random and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the vision each one brought up. The result is a modern Western contemplative supplement to ordinary chart reading: you take any planet, angle, or other point of interest and sit with the image attached to its degree.

In Tradition

Modern Western astrologers treat the Sabian Symbols as an image-layer added on top of chart reading rather than a technique every tradition shares. They are held as evocative metaphors that catch a psychological or developmental nuance sitting at one exact degree. Dane Rudhyar's 1973 An Astrological Mandala gave the symbols their influential developmental-psychological reading. The point is intuitive companionship to systematic work — never a replacement for analysing sign, house, and aspect.

In Practice

To use a symbol, round any zodiacal position UP to the next whole degree — 15°30′ Taurus becomes the symbol for the 16th degree of Taurus — then look it up in a published Sabian list. The positions astrologers most often check are the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Midheaven, the degrees of New and Full Moons, and any planet sitting at a sensitive degree, whether stationary, eclipsed, or critical. The image is read as a contemplative cue, where the spread of associations it suggests is itself the data, rather than as a mechanical predictor. When two symbols sit on an opposition or square, they are sometimes read together as one thematic axis.

Historical Origin

Marc Edmund Jones first published the original 1925 image-set in The Sabian Symbols in Astrology (1953), and Dane Rudhyar developed the psychological-developmental reading in An Astrological Mandala (1973). The system is purely modern Western — there is no classical or pre-1900 tradition behind it — and it has stayed influential in Humanistic and contemporary Western practice. Both the Jones and Rudhyar editions remain in copyright.

Further Reading

• Marc Edmund Jones, The Sabian Symbols in Astrology
• Dane Rudhyar, An Astrological Mandala