Sabian symbols calculator: the image on your degree

There is a picture for every one of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. They were taken down in a single afternoon in San Diego in 1925: the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones read out degrees at random and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler said what she saw, and the set has been in use ever since — odd, uneven, and far more specific than anything else in astrology.

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Sabian Symbols

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A picture for every degree of the zodiac, taken down in one afternoon in 1925. Your Sun, Moon and Ascendant each stand on one of them — an image a single degree wide, narrower than any sign or decan, and meant to be sat with rather than solved.

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A degree is a narrow thing. A sign covers thirty of them and a decan ten, so a Sabian symbol says something about a placement that no sign-level reading can: two people with the Sun in Gemini share a sign, but the image on the eleventh degree is not the image on the twelfth, and the difference is often the more recognisable of the two.

The report gives you the symbol for the degree of every planet from the Sun to Pluto, the lunar Node, the Ascendant and the Midheaven. Start with three: the Sun for what a life is organised around, the Moon for what it needs, and the Ascendant for how it meets the world — and the Ascendant's symbol changes every four minutes of birth time, which makes it the sharpest of all when the time is reliable. The slow outer planets stay on one degree for months, so their symbols belong to everyone born around the same time.

They are meant to be sat with rather than solved. A Sabian symbol is an image, not a definition, and the ones that seem absurd are often the ones that turn out to describe something exactly — the useful response to a symbol you do not understand is to keep it somewhere and come back to it, not to look up an interpretation and move on.

Note that a degree is rounded up: a planet at 11°05' of a sign takes the twelfth degree's symbol, not the eleventh's, which is the convention Jones set and the one most sources follow. It also means a planet near the end of a degree can sit a long way from the picture it is given, so it is worth reading the neighbouring symbol too.

Questions people ask

What are the Sabian symbols?

A set of 360 images, one for each degree of the zodiac, dictated by the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler to the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones in San Diego in 1925.

Which of my degrees should I read?

The report gives them all, from the Sun to Pluto plus the Node, the Ascendant and the Midheaven. Start with the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant. The Ascendant's is the most precise and the most dependent on an accurate birth time, since it changes every four minutes.

Why is my symbol for the next degree up?

Because degrees are counted whole: anything from 11°00' to 11°59' belongs to the twelfth degree of the sign. That is the convention Jones set and the one most sources use.

Do I need my birth time?

For the Sun and the planets, no — a date is usually enough. The Moon changes degree about every two hours, so its symbol needs at least a rough time. For the Ascendant and Midheaven, yes, and precisely, because their degree changes every four minutes.