Marc Edmund Jones

Often called the dean of American astrology, Marc Edmund Jones (1888 to 1980) spent a long life turning symbols into a language. Born in St Louis and raised in Chicago, he wrote screenplays for the movie industry, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, earned a PhD from Columbia, and reshaped his craft with the seven chart-patterns (Splash, Bowl, Bucket, Bundle, Locomotive, Seesaw and Splay) and, with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler in 1925, the 360 Sabian Symbols still used today. His Sun shines in Libra, the Scale, the hero who radiates through fairness, symmetry and balance, forever seeing two sides and searching for the harmonious pattern. It sits in the 8th house of hidden depths and rebirth, so that balancing gaze was aimed at the buried, occult and cabalistic, illuminating what others could not see.

His Moon rests in Leo in the 7th, the warm, dramatic heart that is king and queen in one, poured into the house of partnership and the reading of others: a natural teacher who felt through connection. And Aquarius rises, the eccentric, inventive avatar, the black sheep who beats his own drum. A mediator's eye, a performer's heart, a revolutionary's mask: the perfect chart for a man who gave astrology a fresh grammar.