An old man facing the dark of the north-east

The image

The picture is a lone figure and a great deal of space. An old man stands, or sits, facing the north-east, and what lies before him is dark and empty: no lights, no landmarks, nothing the eye can hold. The line names the direction precisely and leaves everything else open. The north-east is where, in northern countries, the summer dawn first shows, so the darkness he faces is also the part of the sky where light begins.

Meaning

Read as the tradition reads its images, this is a symbol of a long gaze into what has no shape yet, not a picture of an ending. Our keyword is Facing the unknown, and our keynote says that at the end of experience one looks calmly into what cannot be seen. The man is old, which means he has seen a great deal; the darkness is new to him anyway. One way to read a placement in this degree is as the calm that comes from long experience and the honesty to admit that experience runs out somewhere. Looking without fear into a space with nothing in it is a kind of courage that young people and old people can both have.

With Lynda Hill, the old man's degree is read between a background behind it and a heading ahead of it. The background here is Cancer 13, the hand held ready with its strong thumb, a readiness to grip; the heading is Cancer 15, people who ate too much and enjoyed every bite. By her rule the hand that wanted to take hold meets something it cannot hold at all, and from that wide empty view the next degree turns, almost comically, to a full table and contented company. The opposite degree, Capricorn 14, read beside it as an aid, is old granite carved in low relief: experience fixed in stone and visible to everyone, where this degree looks out into a dark that keeps no record at all.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 13°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 13°19′ reads Cancer 14, and so does one at Cancer 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 15 after Cancer 13°59′, or back into Cancer 13 before Cancer 13°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 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 13, Cancer 15 and Capricorn 14 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 13 and Cancer 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 13°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 13. 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: At the end of experience one looks calmly into what cannot be seen.

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 13: Character made visible the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 15: Fullness the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 14: Carved in stone the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to