After the feast: diners who ate their fill and loved it

The image

The picture is the end of a big meal. A group of people have eaten more than they needed and are glad of it; the pleasure is in the line as much as the excess. It does not say what they ate, where, or why they gathered. It catches them at the moment after, leaning back, satisfied, a little heavy, when the table is mostly empty and nobody is in a hurry to stand up. It is one meal, not a habit.

Meaning

The tradition reads a degree image as a symbol, and this one is a symbol of fullness rather than a comment on eating. Our keyword is Fullness, and our keynote says that after plenty comes ease, and the question of what plenty is for. The diners are not scolded by the line. They enjoyed every bite, and that enjoyment is real. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a capacity to receive good things wholeheartedly, to share a table and take pleasure in it, together with the quieter question that follows any feast: now that there is enough, and more than enough, what comes next.

Lynda Hill reads the degree behind a placement as what it starts from and the degree ahead as what it reaches for. Behind this one lies Cancer 14, the old man facing a great dark emptiness, a picture of nothing to hold; ahead lies Cancer 16, a man facing a square with a manuscript roll open before his eyes. By her rule the empty view gives way to a full table, and the full table to study, as if plenty needed to be followed by a search for order and meaning. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Capricorn 15, keyword Comfort in the ward, shows a children's ward full of toys: care and comfort brought into a hard place, beside this degree's easy comfort at a table where nothing is lacking.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 14°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 14°56′ reads Cancer 15, and so does one at Cancer 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 16 after Cancer 14°59′, or back into Cancer 14 before Cancer 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 14, Cancer 16 and Capricorn 15 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 14 and Cancer 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 14°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 14. 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: After plenty comes ease, and the question of what plenty is for.

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 14: Facing the unknown the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 16: Study of pattern the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 15: Comfort in the ward the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to