A daughter of the Revolution, proud of her descent

The image

The picture is a person defined by membership. She belongs to the DAR, the Daughters of the American Revolution, a society open to those who can show descent from someone who served the Revolution. The line gives no face, no meeting and no ceremony; the membership is the whole image. To join, one has to prove a line of descent, so the figure carries her family tree with her as a kind of credential. The society's name is spelled out here for readers today.

Meaning

The tradition reads its images as symbols, and this one is a symbol of identity drawn from ancestry. Our keyword is Pride of lineage, and our keynote says that identity rests on descent from the founding of a country. The image can be read warmly or with a raised eyebrow, and both readings belong to it. One way to see a placement in this degree is as a strong sense of where one comes from and a wish to honour and keep it, the memory of a family and its part in larger history. Another is the question the image leaves open: how much of who one is rests on what one has inherited, and how much on what one does with it.

Lynda Hill reads the DAR member against the degree before, as background, and the degree after, as aim. Behind this one is Cancer 29, the Muse weighing a pair of twins, a choice between two things born together; ahead is Leo 1, a man struck by apoplexy, the first image of Leo, here a picture only. By her rule the weighing of two inheritances settles into pride in one, and from that settled pride the next sign opens with a sudden halt, as if what had been held in place had to break out. The opposite degree, Capricorn 30, read beside it as an aid, is a closed-door meeting of businessmen: belonging that is kept behind shut doors, against this degree's belonging that is shown proudly to the world.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 29°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 30°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 29°11′ reads Cancer 30, and so does one at Cancer 29°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 1 after Cancer 29°59′, or back into Cancer 29 before Cancer 29°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 30 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 29, Leo 1 and Capricorn 30 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 29 and Leo 1, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 30, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 29°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 30; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 29. 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: Identity rests on descent from a founding act.

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 29: Weighing alternatives the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Leo 1: Overreach the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 30: Closed doors the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to