A hand half closed, the thumb standing out

The image

The picture is nothing but a hand. It is bent a little, not clenched into a fist and not lying open, and out of that half-closed shape the thumb stands up firmly. The line gives no owner, no gesture of greeting or refusal, and no background. The thumb is the finger that lets a hand grip, hold tools and close round things; set apart like this it makes the whole hand look ready, as if it were about to take hold.

Meaning

The tradition reads degree images as symbols, and this one asks the reader to look at a hand as one might look at a face. Our keyword is Character made visible, and our keynote says that strength of purpose shows itself in the shape of the hand. Nothing is being done yet; the hand is only held a certain way. One way to read a placement here is as resolve that shows in the body before it shows in action, in posture, grip and the way a person takes up a task. Another is the reminder that a hand is for doing: a strong thumb is not a trophy but a means of holding on.

Lynda Hill's practice places each degree between the one before, read as background, and the one after, read as where it is heading, which she calls the Karmic Condition and the Quest Degree. Before this one comes Cancer 12, the woman nursing a child who brings a message, care given without show; after it comes Cancer 14, an aged man looking out over a great dark emptiness in the north-east. By her rule the quiet care of the nursing mother becomes a hand that is ready to take hold, and the hand gives way to a long look into what nobody can grasp. As a reading aid only, the opposite degree, Capricorn 13, shows a person who worships fire: devotion turned toward a source of heat and light, beside this degree's quiet readiness in a single hand.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 12°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 12°42′ reads Cancer 13, and so does one at Cancer 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 14 after Cancer 12°59′, or back into Cancer 12 before Cancer 12°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 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 12, Cancer 14 and Capricorn 13 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 12 and Cancer 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 12°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 12. 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: Strength of purpose shows itself in the shape of the hand.

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 12: Carrying a message the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 14: Facing the unknown the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 13: Devotion to the source the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to