The 1925 Origin Story: Marc Edmund Jones & Elsie Wheeler

The Sabian Symbols have an unusually specific origin. We know roughly where they were made, when, and by whom — which is rare for a system this old in feel.

The two people

Marc Edmund Jones (1888–1980) was an American astrologer, writer and founder of the Sabian Assembly, an esoteric study group from which the symbols take their name. He wanted a complete set of images for the zodiac's degrees — something that could give each degree a concrete, working picture rather than a dry definition.

Elsie Wheeler was a clairvoyant who lived with severe rheumatoid arthritis and was largely confined to a wheelchair. Jones regarded her as exceptionally gifted, and chose her for exactly the work the project required: to see images on demand, without deliberating over them.

The afternoon

In October 1925, in Balboa Park, San Diego, the two sat together with a stack of 360 unmarked cards. Each card bore only a number — a zodiac degree — on the side facing away from Wheeler. Jones would shuffle and present a card; Wheeler, without seeing the number, described the image that rose for her. Jones wrote it down. They moved through all 360 in a single sitting.

She closed her eyes. He wrote down what she described. They worked through all 360 in one afternoon.

That the whole set came through in one session, in order of the shuffle rather than the zodiac, is part of why practitioners treat the images as received rather than composed. The randomness was deliberate: it kept conscious intention out of the assignment of image to degree.

What happened next

Jones organized and published the symbols, adding a one-word keyword for each degree. Decades later the astrologer Dane Rudhyar reinterpreted the full set in An Astrological Mandala (1973), giving the symbols a psychological and evolutionary framing that shaped how many people read them today. Both readings sit behind the modern interpretations — including the ones on this site.

Why the story matters for reading them

Because the images were received quickly and without editing, they often have the strange, vivid specificity of a dream — a seal embracing a woman, a man asleep at noon, a rock shaped like a face. That texture is the material you work with. If you're new to it, start with what Sabian Symbols are, then how to read one.