What Degree(s) Are My Planets?

by Robert Wilkinson

Over the years I've had people ask a recurring question about reading a chart. Do we round a degree up or down to figure out what Sabian Symbol we should use?

The question from a client prompting this post said "The degrees that I have calculated for my natal planets are off by 1 degree from your reading.. unless I am mistaken. For example: I have that my North node and Mercury are at 8 degrees and (you) said 9.... same with other planets all off by 1 degree from what I thought...."

My answer:

That's because in working with the Sabian Symbols, we always round up. In other words, 0 degrees 1 minute through 1 degree 0 minutes of a degree = 1.

1 degree 1 minute through 2 degrees 0 minutes = 2. The reasoning is the same as (how we state) our age. We are only 1 after we've completed our first year. When we are 29, we've actually part way through our 30th year. The beginning of a thing ultimately leads to the next ordinal.

So your NN is 8 degrees 28 min, and your Mercury is 8 degrees 36 min Virgo. That makes the symbol 9 Virgo. That's why there's no "zero" degree, but there is a 30th degree, since there are 30 degrees in a sign.

Ancient systems also rounded down, or rounded up only after the middle of a degree, but these methods are not used in contemporary astrology to my knowledge.

In earlier years I studied many different symbolic degree systems, including La Volasfera, Sepharial, Kozminsky, Charubel, Carelli, Henson, and others. Over many years I investigated these in hundreds of natal and progressed charts to figure out whether rounding up is always more valid than either rounding down or going to the degree closest to the number of minutes.

Each system asserted how it was to be used, but I still chose to evaluate charts by rounding the degree up, or down, or to the nearest degree. Though there seemed to be valid correlations using all three approaches, that also was influenced by my mindset in that moment, since we do tend to find some part of what we look for. The "secret" of the "observer influence," as it were.

Though I am digressing a bit, that is the core of any problem in divining from a symbol. We all tend to have a mindset, and it requires training to "get out of our own way" to see things as they are rather than through the filter of a predisposition. As an aside, our predisposition affects all "lesser" divining tools, including pendulums, crystals, Applied Kinesiology, as well as other body feedback techniques. The mindset of the observer conditions what is searched for and therefore found to whatever degree.

Taking this further, there are tools that are not entirely subject to the observer effect, since they convey information that may have little or nothing to do with the understanding or skill of the interpreter. Astrology is one of them. The Tarot is another of those, as strange as it seems. While we can get locked into static forms of interpreting the symbols and cards, the cards are able to convey meaning beyond any predisposition we may have if only we can hear our inner voice attuned to Superconsciousness.

That is the fundamental quality to all symbol interpretation. Anything can mean anything to anybody at any time. The trick is to figure out what is being communicated apart from our need to be "right" regarding what we believe it should mean. A horse can mean all kinds of things, depending on the context. So can a door, or a house, or a bird, or the Wheel of Fortune, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Anyway, back to the topic of degree symbols. Regarding the Sabian Symbols, over many decades I found that the intent of the originator, Dr. Marc Edmund Jones, overrode all other considerations. It is as though there is a baseline we can work from that supersedes our opinions about symbols and what type of rounding we use.

I suspect this is due to the methodology he used with Elsie Wheeler when they worked together in Balboa Park that fateful day almost a century ago. He used a rather rigorous method for getting the symbols, with the interpretations coming later. I believe that rigor was absolutely associated with what came forth for each degree.

We don't count degrees from 0 through 29, but rather 1 through 30. We can use the same method of calculating degrees for the progressed positions, as well as transits. Students of the craft who study their progressions using the Sabian Symbols will see a natural evolution of the planetary function as it slowly moves through the signs from one degree to the next.

Dr. Jones and Dane Rudhyar also studied the various systems for degree symbols I mentioned earlier, and it was opined by Rudhyar that the Sabian Symbols are unique in that they represent an organic whole. They are a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 30, 90, 180, and 360-phase way of looking at a fluid reality than may express itself any number of ways in each particular degree of the 360 phases.

I'll close with something for amateur and professional astrologers to consider. Transits have to be interpreted by seeing the degree positions of the planets as a quickly moving "gestalt," or atmosphere, as that planetary function expresses it in any of 10,000 ways. In Horary Astrology, where we use "snapshots of the moment" to see qualities and answers to questions, the symbol offers insights into the meaning of that planetary factor regarding whatever the Horary chart is about and what areas that planet rules.

Anyway, a bit of food for thought concerning degree rounding, symbol interpretation, and the observer effect. There's a lot to consider when we enter a "symbolic reality."

© Copyright 2010 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Mel Tucker]

Bonjour Robert..I was taught that if the planet was retrograde,do not round.
I love your site.Mel

[Rebecca]

Thank you!!