Aries 12 Sabian symbol: Safety in the flock

The Sabian symbol for Aries 12 is white geese gathered close together. The twelfth image of Aries is a plain scene of birds that keep together, and the tradition reads it as a picture of shared safety; the wording of this card is also one of the few the sources dispute.

The image

Several white geese stand or move as one group, close enough to touch. Geese keep watch for one another and raise the alarm together, and the picture shows the flock rather than any single bird. Our line follows the 1925 card, which has white geese; Jones's 1953 book gives the birds as wild ones, and Astrowiki's transcription of Diana Roche's reproduction of the card shows the difference, which may be a misreading or Jones's own change.

Meaning

The tradition reads a flock as safety in numbers. A single goose is easily taken; a flock watches in every direction and moves together, and nothing about it is grand. Our keyword is Safety in the flock, and our keynote says it in a sentence: ordinary creatures keep together and are safer for it. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where belonging to a group, a family or a community gives steadiness, and where the strength is shared rather than individual. Because the 1925 and 1953 wordings differ, this is one of the degrees where the colour of the birds depends on whose text is read; we follow the card.

After Lynda Hill, the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. The one before here is Aries 11, the elected head of a country, one person chosen by many; the one after is Aries 13, a bomb that failed to go off. Read by her rule, the flock follows a leader's role and comes before a charge that never fires: the safety of the many sits between authority and a force that fizzles. The degree opposite can be read beside it as a reading aid: Libra 12 shows miners climbing up out of a pit, a group returning together into daylight, where this degree keeps a group together where it is.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 11°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 11°35′ reads Aries 12, and so does one at Aries 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 13 after Aries 11°59′, or back into Aries 11 before Aries 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 11, Aries 13 and Libra 12 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 11 and Aries 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
Degree opposite: Libra 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
A position at Aries 11°00′00″: Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 11. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed
The 1925 card: Jones's pencilled card has white geese where his 1953 book has wild geese; the card may have been misread or changed. Our line follows the card's picture. 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: Ordinary creatures keep together and are safer for it.

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.
The wording of the 1925 card for this degree is settled.
disputed

What the record shows: Jones's pencilled card has white geese where his 1953 book has wild geese; the card may have been misread or changed. Our line follows the card's picture.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

Your Sabian Symbols reading, $4.99. Includes this system's raw data. Written for you by AI. Read a sample. Charts and the written text are free in every account.

White geese in a flock: ordinary creatures keeping together

Facts