A circle of writers and readers gathered to talk

The image

The picture is a meeting of people who care about books. Some of them write and some of them read, and they have come together as a circle, the kind of group that meets in a parlour, a library or a back room to read aloud and talk. The line gives no names and no titles. What matters is the mixture: makers and receivers of words in the same room, each needing the other.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, which is how the tradition reads every degree image, the circle is about exchange between minds. Our keyword is Cultured exchange, and our keynote says that minds gather to share what they have read and written. A circle has no head of the table, and that shape is part of the picture: everyone faces the middle. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a love of talk about ideas and stories, a wish to belong to a group where reading and writing are shared rather than private, and an ear for what other people have made. It can also be read as the comfort of finding one's own kind, with the risk that such a circle talks mainly to itself.

Lynda Hill's practice sets each degree between the one before, which she calls the Karmic Condition, and the one after, her Quest Degree. Before this one stands Cancer 22, a woman alone at the shore watching for a sail; after it comes Cancer 24, a woman with two male companions on a little sunlit plot facing south. By her rule solitary waiting gives way to a room full of talk, and the talk narrows again to three people sharing a bright patch of ground. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Capricorn 23, shows a pair of medals won for courage in battle: honour given for deeds in the field, beside this degree's quieter honour given to words in a circle of friends.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 22°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 22°52′ reads Cancer 23, and so does one at Cancer 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 24 after Cancer 22°59′, or back into Cancer 22 before Cancer 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 22, Cancer 24 and Capricorn 23 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 22 and Cancer 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 22°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 22. 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: Minds gather to share what they have read and written.

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 22: Expectant waiting the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 24: A patch of sun the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 23: Recognised courage the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to