A large diamond, only partly cut

The image

The picture is a single stone. It is large, it is a diamond, and someone has begun to cut it but has not finished: some faces are flat and bright, others still rough. The line does not show the cutter or the tools. A rough diamond hides most of its fire; only the cut lets light in and back out. So the image holds two facts together, that the worth is already there and that it cannot yet be seen.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, which is how the tradition reads every degree image, the stone is about worth that exists before it shows. Our keyword is Rough value, and our keynote says that great worth is present but still needs shaping to shine. The emphasis falls on the unfinished cutting. A diamond is not made better by being admired; it is made to shine by patient, careful work on its faces, and some of the stone is lost in the process. One way to read a placement here is as a gift that people sense before it has a form, and as the long work of giving it one, which may call for more patience than the person feels they have.

Lynda Hill sets the stone between the degree behind it, its ground, and the degree ahead, its goal. The background here is Cancer 9, a tiny girl reaching for a fish in the water, curiosity with empty hands; the heading is Cancer 11, a clown pulling funny faces. By her rule the reach for something living leads to a thing of lasting worth that is still rough, and that in turn leads to a face shaped for others to read. The opposite degree, Capricorn 10, read beside it as an aid, shows an albatross eating out of someone's hand: trust between two very different worlds, against this degree's patient work on a single hard stone.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 9°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 9°51′ reads Cancer 10, and so does one at Cancer 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 11 after Cancer 9°59′, or back into Cancer 9 before Cancer 9°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Cancer 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 9, Cancer 11 and Capricorn 10 beside it.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Where the image comes from

Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced

Degree before and after

Cancer 9 and Cancer 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 9°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 9. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed

How the schools read it

Marc Edmund Jones (1953)

Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.

Dane Rudhyar (1973)

Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.

Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)

Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.

The Sabian Assembly

Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.

EsoTerrier

Our keynote: Great worth is present but still needs shaping to shine.

Claims about it

• The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.

  false

  What the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.

• Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.

  false

  What the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.

• Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.

  false

  What the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Cancer 9: Innocent reaching the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 11: The comic mask the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 10: Trust across worlds the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to