《象征之轮 Sabian符号的起源，结构和力量》（一）静电鱼翻译

《象征之轮》

第一章

“THE WHEEL OF SIGNIFICANCE

The Origin, Structure and Power of the Sabian Symbols”

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《象征之轮 Sabian符号的起源，结构和力量》

引言：一本关于萨比恩象征的好书翻译

这是 Dane Rudhyar的一本重要著作。 丹恩鲁伊尔（Dane Rudhyar）是法国血统的美国人，当代作曲家，画家和占星家。他多才多艺，而且在将心理学和占星学的融合中独树一帜，他的人本主义占星思想，于后世有深远影响。

而这本关于萨比恩象征的作品《象征之轮 Sabian符号的起源，结构和力量》，我在读后感觉颇好，鉴于我对萨比恩象征研究已久，见到的好书不多，而国内关于萨比恩象征的谬误传诵尤其多，所以，打算从今天开始为大家即兴翻译讲解一下本书的精华，也算是为广大占星爱好者造福之事。

“The Wheel of Significance is the third volume of The Lost Writings of Dane Rudhyar series; it was written during 1944-45. Chronologically, The Wheel of Significance follows the material found in the first two volumes of The Lost Writings — The Universal Matrix, a work on the Zodiac and its energies, and a work on the astrological houses, entitled The Way of Creative Accomplishment. Like the two earlier volumes, The Wheel of Significance has been virtually unseen for nearly seventy years, and the material was not incorporated into subsequent writings.

The Wheel of Significance is unique in its in-depth examination of the amazing inner structure of the 360 Sabian Symbols. The original articles additionally comprise the first full work on the meaning, power and use of the Sabian Symbols. In view of the out-of-print status of Rudhyar's later work on the Symbols, An Astrological Mandala, it seems appropriate to make the earlier material available for the benefit of students and scholars. And as we'll see below, The Wheel of Significance occupies a special place in the history of the Sabian Symbols, with its own fascinating background story.”

“The Origin and History of the Sabian Symbols

Before outlining the inner structure of the Sabian Symbols, let's review the origin and history of the 360 Sabian Symbols — from their revelation in 1925 until the publication of The Wheel of Significance in 1944-45.

It happen on an unknown day during 1925, between two occupants of a car parked in San Diego's Balboa Park — Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler, a clairvoyant crippled with arthritis — and a mysterious third party. In his 1953 work on The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, Marc Jones describes the day's work in these words:

Miss Elsie Wheeler was very anxious to start, and on the visible side of things it was necessary to provide uninterrupted hours, with a problem of inevitable fatigue to be taken into account. She had to be carried, no others could be present and conditions in general had to enable her to function in her accustomed manner. Balboa Park in San Diego offered a spot where a driveway was a matter of a very few yards from one of the city's busiest traffic inter”

“sections, fortuitously meeting the necessity that work of this sort be done in the turmoil of some metropolitan center or other unusually dense aggregation of people active in the business of being. There was a screen of trees and bushes, and during the day no one would show any interest in a car parked here for a few hours. Special blank cards were prepared for the 360 degrees, so that they could be shuffled continuously. A quarter of the pile was taken at random for the first session. One card was put face down before the medium, and she reported on the picture she saw by inward vision. This was noted hurriedly in pencil on the card itself. The process continued steadily for nearly two hours, and then after a brief rest another ninety symbols were recorded. After a drive well out into the country . . . sessions were resumed at the same spot in the park and the other degrees interpreted in a similar fashion.

The author had three tasks in addition to the physical care of his student sensitive. These were (1) the shuffling which maintained the immediate synchronization with source material, (2) making pencil notations of the psychic[…]”

“selection at each point of progress, and (3) sustaining the ancient mind-matrix, which made the whole procedure possible. The third task had its expression, in terms of any human experience be captured in words, through the presence and co-operation on the invisible side of life of that one of the Brothers (to use the term by which he would be identified in Theosophy) who has been concerned in every spiritistic phase of Sabian investigation.

The pictures which Miss Wheeler saw came from various sources, as far as their substance was concerned. Some were directly out of her own experience, or as she reached out to take them from other minds directly available to her. Some were beyond her range of comprehension and were impressed upon her consciousness, and so were received in distorted fashion or with an overlay of detail which had to be screened out. As events have shown, her total contribution was an exceptional achievement, and this one of the author's volumes is dedicated to her memory, in the hope that it may in time become a monument to the beauty of her character and the immortal quality of her ideals. (pp. 333-34).”

“What happened next in the story of the Symbols is best described by Gavin Kent McClung in his article The Prophetic Sabian Symbols:

After Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler discovered the Sabian symbols, Jones placed in storage the cards on which they were recorded. He felt that making scientific use of the symbols in astrology might not be possible. At the time (the mid-1920s), Jones and others were involved in the scientific reorganization of astrology itself, and in various types of occult investigation.

It was these other interests that brought him into temporary partnership with Elsie Wheeler to obtain a new set of symbols for the degrees of the zodiac. He had found the degree-symbols of Charubel to be useful, but felt that the Charubel series was overly moralized or slanted in terms of "good/bad" interpretation. Also, as Charubel's symbols were meant to illuminate the Ascendant degree only, Jones believed that a fresh approach could produce a set of symbols with more universal significance.

When he came to realize that it might never again be possible to re-create the situation that had allowed the original discovery of the Sabian symbols, Jones decided[…]”

“copies of the mimeographed courses on astrology he was then sending to the members of the Sabian Assembly which he had founded. "Symbolical Astrology" was written in 1931, and it listed and interpreted symbols for each degree of the zodiac. I became very much interested in these symbols which, for various reasons that I will presently state, I found far superior to previously published sets of degree symbols; and when urged by my friend Alice Bailey, I decided to write my book The Astrology of Personality (summer 1934 to spring 1936) I asked Marc Jones for permission to include in it a condensed version of the symbols and their interpretations. This permission was readily granted. . . .

As I came more and more to use the 360 Sabian symbols I grew dissatisfied with many of their formulations and interpretations, even though I was ever more amazed by the inner structure of the entire series, especially considering the totally aleatory manner in which the symbols were obtained. As a result I started to write a long series of articles, entitled The Wheel of Significance, which were published serially in American Astrology magazine between October 1944 and December 1945. (An Astrological Mandala, pp[…]”

这本书创作于1944年至45年。在深入研究360 Sabian符号令人惊叹的内部结构方面是独一无二的。

开篇再次说明了一下“Sabian符号的起源和历史”，是由马克·埃德蒙·琼斯和埃尔西·惠勒两位人物在1925年机缘巧合的完成的。

马克(Marc Edmund Jones (October 1, 1888 - March 5, 1980)先生这位被誉为美国占星学之父，他受到一位西班牙基督教徒的一本「生命之源」获得启发，并结识了他的学生Elsie Wheeler，这位小姐是一名通灵者，他们互相合作，在序言里详细描述了他们如何制作这套象征系统的。

马克为黄道360度准备了特殊的360张空白卡片，以便可以连续洗牌。当惠勒手上拿到卡片时脑中所浮现的印象加以一一纪录在纸条上，一共有360条，每一条如同诗般地描述黄道360度上每一个度数涵义，最终形成了这个珍贵的灵光乍现却充满隐喻象征的重要体系。

而在后续的使用中，本书作者发现萨比恩象征系统的科学性，以及在解释上的不确定性，这令他终于下决心开始好好的为这个珍贵的象征系统做注释，这才有了这本珍贵的书籍诞生。

这个序言简洁扼要，再次重复了这是一次珍贵的通灵隐喻结构的象征系统，后文还将与中国的易经等结合起来，是个非常有意思的占星学研究方向。

有兴趣的朋友，敬请期待下次的翻译。

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