The elected head of a country, carrying the trust of many

The image

The picture is a person in office, the elected head of a country. No name, nation or party is given, and the image does not show a ceremony or a crowd; it shows a role. What defines the role is how it was gained: the person was chosen, so the power they hold comes from the many who chose them and can be taken back.

Meaning

As a symbol, the elected leader is someone who speaks and acts on behalf of others. The authority is real, but it is borrowed: it rests on a public trust and has to be answered for. Our keyword is Representative authority, and our keynote reads the picture in one sentence: one person stands for the wishes of many and carries their authority. The tradition would look at a placement here as a place where a person takes on responsibility for a group, speaks for it, or is seen as its face. The image is about the shape of the role, not about whether anyone holds it well.

Lynda Hill reads each degree with the one before it, the Karmic Condition, and the one after it, the Quest Degree. Before Aries 11 comes Aries 10, a teacher giving very old symbols fresh shapes; after it comes Aries 12, white geese gathered in a flock. So the leader grows out of a teacher's work of renewal and looks ahead to the ordinary safety of a flock that keeps together, the people the office exists for. The degree opposite, Libra 11, is a professor looking out above the rims of his glasses, an appraising eye; as a reading aid it sets judgement from outside beside the authority given from within a people.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 10°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 11°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 10°58′ reads Aries 11, and so does one at Aries 10°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 12 after Aries 10°59′, or back into Aries 10 before Aries 10°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 Aries 11 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 10, Aries 12 and Libra 11 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

Aries 10 and Aries 12, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Libra 11, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aries 10°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 11; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 10. 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: One person stands for the wishes of many and carries their authority.

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

• Aries 10: Renewing tradition the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aries 12: Safety in the flock the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Libra 11: Critical appraisal the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to