Three people on a small sunny plot facing south

The image

The picture is a small patch of land in good light. It faces south, which in the northern hemisphere means it catches the sun for most of the day, and on it are three people: a woman and two men who keep her company. The line does not say how they are related, whether they are family, friends or neighbours, nor what they do there. It gives the warmth of the place and the closeness of the three, nothing more.

Meaning

The tradition reads its images as symbols, and this one is a symbol of a shared good place rather than a story about a triangle. Our keyword is A patch of sun, and our keynote says that three people share a bright piece of ground turned to the south. The plot is little, so the sharing is close; the light is generous, so there is enough of it for all three. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a gift for finding or making a sheltered, sunny corner of life and inviting a few people into it, and as the balancing that any group of three asks for, where no one is left in the shade.

For Lynda Hill, what lies one degree back is the ground of a placement and what lies one degree on is its aim. The background here is Cancer 23, the literary circle of writers and readers, a gathering of many; the heading is Cancer 25, something dark, a shadow or a cloak, falling all at once across the right shoulder. By her rule the wide circle of talk narrows to three people in the sun, and from that bright plot the next degree turns to a sudden shadow, light and dark following one another as they do in any day. The opposite degree, Capricorn 24, read beside it as an aid, is a woman going into a convent: a life withdrawn behind walls into one dedication, against this open, sunlit ground shared with company.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 23°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 24°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 23°29′ reads Cancer 24, and so does one at Cancer 23°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 25 after Cancer 23°59′, or back into Cancer 23 before Cancer 23°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 24 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 23, Cancer 25 and Capricorn 24 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 23 and Cancer 25, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 24, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 23°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 24; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 23. 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: Three people share a bright piece of ground turned to the south.

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 23: Cultured exchange the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 25: Sudden shadow the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 24: Dedication the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to