The image
The picture is a shoreline and a watcher. A woman stands looking out over the water, and she is looking for one thing in particular, a sailing boat that she expects to come in. The line does not say who is aboard, how long she has watched, or whether the sail is in sight yet. A sailing boat depends on the wind, so its arrival cannot be hurried; the woman's part is to keep watching while the weather decides.
Meaning
The tradition reads degree images as symbols, and this one is a symbol of hope held over time. Our keyword is Expectant waiting, and our keynote says that hope stands at the shore for what is coming over the water. The image is quiet but not passive. To watch the sea for a particular sail is to hold one picture steadily in the mind against a wide, changing view. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a gift for patient expectation, for keeping faith with someone or something that is not here yet, and as the strain that such waiting can bring when the water stays empty for a long while.
After Lynda Hill, the degrees on either side of a placement are read as its context: the one before as background, the one after as heading. Before this degree comes Cancer 21, the opera diva in full song, a voice that fills a hall; after it comes Cancer 23, writers and readers meeting as a literary circle. By her rule the great public voice falls silent at the shore, and the solitary watcher's waiting opens onto company, conversation and shared books. The opposite degree, Capricorn 22, read beside it as an aid, is a general who loses with good grace: someone meeting an outcome already known, where this woman stands before an outcome that has not yet come over the horizon.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 21°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 22°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 21°15′ reads Cancer 22, and so does one at Cancer 21°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 23 after Cancer 21°59′, or back into Cancer 21 before Cancer 21°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 22 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 21, Cancer 23 and Capricorn 22 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 21 and Cancer 23, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Capricorn 22, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Cancer 21°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 22; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 21. 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: Hope stands at the shore for what is coming over the water.
Claims about it
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The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.
falseWhat 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.
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Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.
falseWhat the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.
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Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.
falseWhat 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 21: Virtuoso self-expression the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Cancer 23: Cultured exchange the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Capricorn 22: Grace in defeat the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
