The Sabians Say I

Sabian Symbols as a Spiritual Guide
A Spiritual Path Into The Heart Of The 360 Degree Hologram

Lynda Hill

  A little about my journey into the Symbols

Lynda Hill

I first heard about the Sabian Symbols in 1988 during a class I took in Sydney with one of my teachers, Alia Ryder.  The class was on the predictive technique called “Progressions” during which Alia spoke about the Progressed New Moon cycles.  It was an outstanding class and one that I won’t ever forget.  As part of it, Alia also gave each of us in the class the Sabian Symbol for our own upcoming New Moon cycle.

I was so fascinated by what my symbol had read that I had an immediate and deeply felt urge to find out more about what these mysterious things were.  I’m eternally grateful to Alia for having introduced them to me.  Discovering them lead to my life changing in more ways than I can count.

Following that class I bought Dane Rudhyar’s 1973 masterpiece, An Astrological Mandala.  I looked up some of the Symbols and read the book a little, but didn’t immediately do much with them in practice.  Then, on my birthday in 1992, a clairvoyant friend of mine did an impromptu reading for me.  Her words still ring in my ears today.  She said that I would do something that very few people were doing in astrology, in which I would specialise.  She added that I would travel the world, particularly in the US, lecturing and teaching about this thing I would do, and that I would write books about it and that one of them would be hugely successful.  However, at that stage of my life, I couldn’t see me being able to lecture about anything, and I was definitely not into public speaking.

It was straight after that reading, though, that I realised that the things my friend had seen were actually what I wanted to do, but hadn’t realised until then.  I sat in my office and asked the “powers that be” to help me to do the things she had foreseen.  I wanted to teach and write and travel and to contribute something special to my chosen field of astrology.  Well, very soon after making that request to Spirit, I began seriously researching the Symbols.  Having never lectured in my life until then, I was booked to give a lecture a few weeks later in Sydney on them.  Six months later, at the invitation of astrologer Raymond Merriman, I gave two presentations on the Symbols at an astrology conference in Lansing, Michigan.  I have now spoken right across the US and in many countries around the world and have written two books about them.  I would never have thought this to be possible.  But Spirit had this plan for me.

Just what are the Sabian Symbols?

The Symbols are a set of 360 phrases, that correspond to each degree of the zodiac.  They are not pictures but rather images that are evoked in words.  Marc Edmund Jones was an astrologer, Hollywood screenwriter, Spiritualist and an ordained Presbyterian minister.  Elsie May Wheeler was a professional medium of considerable reputation, crippled with life-long arthritis and confined to a wheelchair.  Before coming to California in 1923, Miss Wheeler had spent some 30 years in The Bethesda Hospital and Home For The Incurables in St. Louis, Missouri, in the company of people of all ages who had incurable diseases and conditions.

Together, Jones and Wheeler spent a day in 1925 at Balboa Park in San Diego.  Knowing Elsie as a gifted medium, Jones had brought a set of 360 white 3 x 5 index cards on which he had previously written in pen each degree of the zodiac – starting at Aries 1 and ending at Pisces 30.

As the two sat there in his car, Jones shuffled the cards, pulled one randomly from the deck and placed each in turn, face down, before them.  Elsie would then receive an image for each card which Jones believed came from a Spiritual entity belonging to the Sabian Brotherhood – a sect of astrologers that was active in what was then Mesopotamia around 2,000 years ago.  Elsie was, in essence, tapping into what he referred to as the “ancient mind matrix.”  She spoke each image aloud as it was given to her and Jones wrote it down, in “roughly penciled notes,” on the index card.  They did all 360 degrees in one day.  Dane Rudhyar, who helped popularize the Symbols, said that if they did it in, say, eight hours, that would mean she saw a different Symbol, and Jones had written it down, every minute and a half for eight hours.  That would have been an extraordinary feat for the wheel chair bound Elsie, for to spend all day doing this would have been quite an arduous task for her.  Not to mention that her physical needs would have to have been taken care of during the day as well.  Thus were The Sabian Symbols given birth.

In astrological use, when looking up the Sabian Symbols in a chart, one always has to add one degree to each as the Sabian Symbols start a 1°, but the zodiac starts at 0°.  For example, my own Sun degree is 28 Scorpio, or the 29^th degree of that sign.  Whether you are looking at the astrological charts of Gandhi, Hitler or Princess Diana, for example, the Symbols will accurately describe the life of the person.

Princess Diana’s Moon’s North Node (the astrological point said to be associated with one’s Destiny) is at Leo 29: A Mermaid Has Climbed To The Rocky Shore Of A Bleak Coast: She Awaits The Prince Who Will Bring Her Immortality.  This Symbol needs no explaining as it is so incredibly true of her life.  Diana was often seen in a swimming costume, by the sea, in a pool or on a boat, etc.  She was also often seen beautifully dressed and immaculately groomed.  And she did, after all, marry a Prince.

A Cancerian, her Sun degree is Cancer 10: A Large Diamond In The First Stages Of The Cutting Process.  When she was first depicted in the press, she was young and gorgeous, but somewhat naïve.  As she grew into her role in the Royal Family, she became more and more well groomed and impeccably dressed.  But following her divorce from Prince Charles, she died in a car crash in Paris, smack on a solar eclipse.  She had just been given a diamond engagement ring, reportedly worth over a hundred thousand English pounds, by Dodi Fayed, the son of a very wealthy Egyptian businessman.  And another; the Symbol for Diana’s Pluto is Virgo 7: A Harem – and Dodi was well known for his womanising.  The list of examples goes on and on.  Princess Di’s chart is just one example of how the Sabian Symbols can describe our unfoldment, or even, it seems, our fate.

The Symbols as an Oracle

The Sabian Symbols are also amazing useful as an oracle.  They reveal things in a magical way and they seem to somehow tap into the hologram that we call life.  Whether you think of a number between 1 and 360 and look up the relevant Symbol, open a book on the Symbols at random or use the online Oracle,** they seem to always come up with just the right advice or insight.

I have a lot of extraordinary stories about the Symbols, but I particularly like this little story that happened just recently.  My son was visiting me to fix my internet connection.  As he was about to leave I suggested that he check out the new website that I’ve been working on for some time (it will be going live hopefully at the end of May).  He clicked through a few pages and said it looked great.  He then went into a section that allows one to look up any given Symbol – it has a drop-down box which, when one clicks on the sign and degree, up comes the Symbol.  Joel was just randomly clicking on signs and degrees and I suggested that he should look up Sagittarius 18 to see what the Symbol said, as that is the degree of his Venus.  He didn’t do that but instead quickly went to the Oracle link on the site.  When one clicks on the Oracle, a Symbol will come up randomly as an answer to a question.  Joel was not thinking about anything when he clicked on it, and up came Sagittarius 18!  We both just sat there and stared at the screen in amazement.

I’ve said for years that the Symbols seem to want to surprise and delight us so as to get one “sucked in” to them, and showing one the magic they perform.  They have always been an incredible guide, never failing to allow access to Spirit’s plan for me.  May you also find them to be so.

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** Please see: http://sabiansymbols.com/oracle/