The article that follows is based on a talk Marc Jones gave for "The Guild." in 1942. It was subsequently published in the April issue of "The Astrological Review that same year.
The Sabian symbols used for this talk were taken from Marc's 1931 mimeograph lesson set on Symbolical Astrology. He later asked that those symbols not be used anymore, after he went back to the original brief notations he took at the time the Sabian symbols were derived in 1925. He published those notes in his classic 1953 work, The Sabian Symbols in Astrology. Nevertheless, the use of the old symbols is helpful in illustrating how the Sabian symbols can be used to interpret an astrological chart. The Sabian symbols used in this talk are listed at the end of this article in their present and final form.
The chart of Theodore Roosevelt that was used to illustrate his talk is included here below. It is recognized that there are at least several birth times given for Theodore Roosevelt; however, the references to the documentation of Roosevelt's birth time supports the chart given here and in several other of Marc Jones' books.
The "15 point analysis" set forth in this talk was revised years later and published as a "Sixteen-Point Analysis" in Marc Jones' 1960 book, The Essentials of Astrological Analysis.
By Marc Edmund Jones
The Fifteen Most Important Points in a Horoscope Delineation. How to Proceed After Getting an Overview of the Chart
The fifteen-point method of interpretation is absolutely dependable when we have an exact birth hour. When we proceed, as we are doing tonight, without the preliminary orientation that comes from identifying the pattern of the chart and recognizing some of its characteristics as a whole, a little more skill and care is required, but the testimony of each of the fifteen points is highly accurate. The method of preliminary overview is to help the beginner make sure he is getting off on the right foot in approaching the chart, and to save time for the more skilled professional. Every indication of a horoscope, however, must give its own clear testimony if there is any truth to astrology at all. Otherwise one thing would depend upon another, and that upon another, and so on, without end.
Cuvier once remarked: "Show me a bone and I will identify the animal." I used to laugh at that statement until I took a class in comparative anatomy. The professor greeted me with a grudging cordiality; "What are you, a philosophy major, doing over here on the science side?" "Well," I said, "philosophers have to talk about science sometimes and I want to know what I am talking about." He turned to address the group of us, all but myself on the way to become doctors. "You'll have to work if you want to get A's here," he remarked, and then explained how we could get in the laboratory at night and on Sundays, as well as in working hours. To me he said: "Why don't you hurry through the bones, which will be of little use to you, and put in the extra time on the brain of the shark, ahead of the class?" I followed his suggestion, the net result of which was that I was the first one that year to take the bone examination. This was given individually. We sat down before the bone box, with the idea that I recognize anything he handed me. He began with the longest bone I ever saw. "If it wasn't so big," I said, "I'd identify it as the femur of a bird . . . . I suppose it's some crazy kind of a hybrid." He laughed: "Why don't you stick to your guns? Did you ever hear of an ostrich?"
Astrology duplicates this preposition every day. If you have skill enough you can take any fragment of a chart, and read the life from it. It is far more wonderful than Sherlock Holmes. We used to try our hands at it, literally, taking a torn quarter of a chart, and finding how much we could gather from just that. It all comes down to a question of technique. Everyone must train himself, in some particular and orderly way, to recognize the full significance of every detail. There are only two really efficient ways to read the details in a chart. One is to work from the houses, and the other from the planets. You can also work from the signs but it is not as easy or sure a method. Beginners always used to take the houses, and go round the chart quite completely, bringing out everything about personality first, then money, and so on. A much more effective method is to take the planets in order, because in this case you are reading more dynamically. The houses are created in the heavens by the horizon at the exact time of birth. If you read from the houses you are distributing your horizon, which is a static thing, a foundation. Thus there is a way of greeting, in secret-society work: "Are you on the level?" Astrology goes a step further and says, "On what level are you?" The houses are a distribution of this level, or of your horizon, but it is still a static proposition.
The planets are the dynamic bodies that distribute the forces of actual living and experience, setting up the strains and stresses of life and creating the basic complex in which you have your existence. You live by working against dynamic compulsions, struggling back and forth, interacting with the universe. You and the universe have a partnership in activity. You are shadow-boxing with the universe every minute of your existence. Even your dreams are the shadow-boxing you do when you are asleep. The planets are the bodies in the heavens which articulate the forces, or express the system of energy of which the universe is composed. The planets in your chart represent your distribution of this energy, or show what part of it you have made your own. By working from the planets you have a key to an individual's very livingness, and thus are able to help him much more than merely telling him that he has an open personality, a long body and a closed pocketbook.
I am giving you tonight an order for reading the chart that is convenient. I suppose it is my convenience. If you don't like the particular order, I suggest you change it. The most successful pupil I have, after studying this order for awhile, said, "I think it works much better if you put it around this way." For her it does. I am sure that many in the audience, after studying the order as I give it, will find many other even better arrangements. We never get anywhere imitating or aping each other.
The chart I am using is that of President Theodore Roosevelt. George MacCormack, one of the founders of the Guild, obtained the data rather directly from the Roosevelt family, and has done a lot of work upon it, so that we can be rather sure of the data. It sometimes is a little better to use, as an example case, someone who is not so close to us as we view him through our prejudices of the moment. Teddy Roosevelt's place in history is fairly secure. Those who want to be mad at a Roosevelt have another one nearer at hand, and those who want to worship a Republican have a Wilkie. Teddy, however, is close enough so that we all know his life and character well enough to appreciate his chart.
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No. 1. I begin with the planet Mars because it is the planet that has most to do with simple activity. Mars is the planet that is closest to the earth outside of the earth. It represents the place in life where you throw off energy, fly off the handle and move the hardest to get things done. Because Mars is in the first house here in Teddy Roosevelt's chart, therefore it calls for unusual energy, which certainly describes the native. Now let's get a technique down for this proposition of reading from the planets. Look at each planet by sign, by house and then, in order to have a little color for the interpretation, by the symbolical degree.
The justification for a use of these symbolical degrees is that they work. Here is something that baffles people. I remember the story in the Bible of the boy who was cured of blindness. The learned people came to him and said it was impossible. It just didn't happen. The "medical books" said it couldn't be done that way. This, of course, is my own version of the story! The young man in the Bible narrative, who was a simple sort of fellow, remarked: "What you say is very interesting. You are learned gentlemen. I am convinced you are very clever, and know much more than I do. However, all I know is that once I was blind, and now I see." We won't go into a discussion of the symbolical degrees, but content ourselves with the fact that they are something that works.
Here we have Mars in Capricorn, or in the sign of critical discrimination. With my Mercury in Scorpio, I will be giving you many nicknames tonight, and I would suggest that you make your own when mine do not click. I have made them for myself in order to save time and effort and I find them a great help. To me Capricorn is the sign of "critical discrimination," well illustrated by Teddy's campaign against the "nature fakers." Mars is also in the house of personality, on a degree that is symbolized rather curiously as a degree of splendor. The Sabian degree (Capricorn 18) reads: "From the proud new warship of Britannia, a token of her maritime power, flies the Union Jack in calm dignity."1 Remember that T.R. made the United States a first-class power, and that he did it with the Navy. Thus the symbol puts the case exactly. What is the idea of a warship? A warship represents compact strength. A warship is attack, and not defense. A warship has dignity and this man, with his personality, with his critical discrimination, was a man who, in everything he did, said: "We have to find a way to make this stand out, to make this dignified." For himself, he went out West and he became a cowboy, a good one. Not the kind they have on dude ranches. When he was a sickly, scrawny youngster with squinty eyes, he was yet determined to be well, and he made himself over. He became a real "rough rider." All this is shown when you get the house, the sign and the degree of Mars. Thus you have the first salient point in this life.
The Part of Fortune, a projection of the will's focus, in this chart, is in the eighth house -- in Virgo. My nickname for Virgo is assimilation. Virgo has the particular and peculiar gift of putting things where they are useful. The eighth house is the place of regeneration. The 18thdegree of Virgo is one of sharpness. The Sabian symbol (Virgo 18) reads: "Two giggling young girls are sitting facing each other, knees tightly touching, working a Ouija board on their laps,"2 which is an indication of the possible conscious touch between realms visible and invisible. Here is very significant light upon the character of Theodore Roosevelt. He was particularly sensitive to the things under the surface, or the future effect of present causes. He started out to assimilate everything under the sun, by a self-regeneration in a series of tete-a-tetes with life. Almost anybody could visit the White House and find him willing to talk about the visitor's particular interest. Roosevelt was a literary critic and read everything. He tried to be well informed on almost every subject. The eighth house is where you live according to the ideas that other people have of you; where you try to make yourself what you want to be, or what you want people to think you are. Here is a perfect explanation of Teddy Roosevelt in his general temperament, all learned astrologically with only two out of the fifteen points.
The North Node in Theodore Roosevelt's chart is in the sign of poetic appreciation -- Pisces. Pisces sees people universally. Sometimes this means it is rather sloppy, but often it is very delicate and lovely. T.R. loved people. Some of this was simulated, but the man was honest, and he was untiring in his personal activities with others. The node was also in the house of resources, which shows this temperament inexhaustibility, on a degree of incitation. The symbolical degree (Pisces 6) reads: "All the traditional dignity of West Point is seen in the parade of the officers-in-the-making, under the setting sun."4 This dramatizes the exaltation of life's values, in a response given to tradition, but where liberty is protected; the call of the heart to joyous duty. It shows the power that Roosevelt had for doing everything with dignity, for seeing everything "on parade." Thus he is the one man who did more than any other who ever lived to conserve the natural resources of America.
Theodore Roosevelt had the other abnormal situation which, at its worst is well represented by the young lady who explained that she "got all her exercise by jumping at conclusions." Roosevelt himself was always stumbling over his own toes, with a mind six leaps ahead of itself. Fortunately for American history, he made use of this type of mentality rather than allowing it to defeat him. If the moon is swift by daily motion the faculties of the perception are quick rather than certain and if Mercury rises ahead of the sun the mind is eager rather than deliberate.
What I am trying to emphasize tonight is that it is unfair to describe a person who does not fit into the analyst's particular way of doing things as being lacking in something. He is not necessarily unintelligent. And here I will say something that I have always believed. You will probably not agree with me, but to my way of thinking, everyone is basically intelligent and intelligence is the functioning of self as it is shown by Mercury. Thus when I have to teach a mixed group of students, I have to go slower than when I can talk to one at a time and adjust to the pattern of a single mind. Any success I have in teaching is based upon my immense respect for the intelligence of the other person. People have handicaps, but they can as easily be assets. Intelligence is simply the functioning of the projective self which Mercury reveals.
Teddy Roosevelt's Mercury is in the house of the higher mind, in the creative-ability sign of Scorpio, in a degree of alliance. The Sabian symbol (Scorpio 3) reads: "At a clearing of pioneer days in the forest all the neighbors have gathered to assist in a happy house-raising."5 This symbolizes the accentuation of the more constructive factors in human society, the desire of men at heart to share all experience. In an earlier period houses were not built as they are today. People lived far apart. But a man would get everything ready, and then the neighbors would come from far and near, and the house would go up before night. Here we have the spirit of the creative Scorpio as well as the genius of the ninth house represented by T.R.'s tremendous versatility. He had a wonderful way of meeting people from the cowboy or soldier to the scientist or philosopher of his day, and he did it without any trouble at all. He had an exceptional memory for names and faces, and was always ready to let people know he was glad to see them. Even in the middle of a talk before a large audience he might suddenly spy a friend up in the gallery, and call out with a wave of his hand.
The next most important indication is given by the tenth house, which in Roosevelt's case emphasizes the creative sign Scorpio. Since the lord of the tenth, or Mars, is in the first house, his business or professional affairs are entirely in his own hands. The absence of any planets in the tenth house shows that there is no complication here. A third necessary consideration is the place of the moon, representing the native's touch with the public, and since the lesser light is in Roosevelt's house of opportunity, his great professional freedom for shaping his own career has a further testimony.
Most revealing of all is the "dynamic focus of personality." The theory is this: you are successful in life not on the basis of what comes to you easily but because of what is hard enough to make you work for it. A man in Oakland heard me explain this, and said: "I don't believe it. I am going to test you." I answered: "Fine." I like that. I like people to have their own ideas and stick to them; who change them only after careful thought and study. When I saw the man later he reported, "I checked that theory of yours in fifty charts of people well known to me, and it worked every time!" This pattern of success is indicated by the closest square or opposition in the chart, giving a vocational clue to the point of highest strain or tightest stress in the individuality. In Roosevelt's chart this is the square between Neptune and Jupiter. Neptune came into man's experience with the social revolution of 1848, since it was discovered in 1848, and this means that Roosevelt's most successful concern would be with those elements in sympathy which in a sense are new, beginning with the new industrial philosophy or psychology. In America the struggle was dramatized by William Jennings Bryan but Roosevelt actually gave voice to the great American transition, and with his "big stick" was the real champion of the new political ethics. The fact that the aspect here is a square rather than an opposition indicates a success based upon practical rather than theoretical conditions. Because Jupiter is the other planet concerned, Roosevelt's career was an expression of his own stirrings of soul. Because these two planets belong to diverse departments, his success was dependent on his own personal originality or his disinclination to fit into any ready-made groove.
In T.R.'s chart the South Node is in the sign of Virgo, the sign of assimilation; in the house of regeneration; and on a degree of verification. The symbol (Virgo 6) reads: "Children's voices and the smiles of elders; it is a merry-go-round, with blatant music and unrestrained joyousness."8 Here is the intensification of all elements of life and being by civilization; the elevation of pleasure to a transmuting force; or assimilation in a carnival spirit. Theodore Roosevelt assimilated everything because he had the vital gift for throwing himself whole-heartedly into all his activities. Here is an example of the "Jack-of-all-trades" who is successful because he is willing and able to work a little harder at each of the trades. His chart is the splash type -- the planets are scattered pretty well all over the map -- but he made an amazing success of his life through his boundless energy and great determination.
The inexorable movement of the clock tonight makes it necessary for me to get briefer and briefer, but the general idea of the fifteen-point reading ought to be clear and it ought to be sufficient to give just a sketchy interpretation of the three remaining points.
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1 Capricorn 18 - "The Union Jack"
2 Virgo 18 - "An ouija board"
3 Scorpio 4 - "A youth holding a lighted candle"
4 Pisces 6 - "Officers on dress parade"
5 Scorpio 3 - "A house-raising"
6 Cancer 13 - "One hand slightly flexed with a very prominent thumb"
7 Gemini 22 - "A barn dance"
8 Virgo 6 - "A merry-go-round"
9 Leo 12 - "An evening lawn party"
10 Pisces 23 - "Spiritist phenomena"
11 Sagittarius 18 - "Tiny children in sunbonnets"
12 Gemini 3 - "The garden of the Tuileries"
13Taurus 7 - "A woman of Samaria"