The image
The picture is a haircut, and in 1925 a haircut could be a declaration. A woman's long hair, the kind worn up or in braids for generations, is cut off into a bob, short and level at the jaw. The line does not say whether she chose it gladly or hesitated, nor who holds the scissors. It gives the change itself: what was long and traditional becomes short and new in a few minutes.
Meaning
Read as the tradition reads its images, the bob is a symbol of shaping oneself on purpose. Our keyword is Self-fashioning, and our keynote says that appearance is deliberately shaped to meet the world. The picture is small and personal and yet it carries a whole change of times, since a style worn by many becomes a statement about a generation. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a readiness to choose one's own look and manner instead of the one handed down, and as an awareness that the outward form speaks first, before any word is said. It can also be read for the courage such a small change sometimes takes.
As Lynda Hill reads neighbours, the haircut has a past one degree back and a next step one degree on. Behind this one lies Leo 2, mumps sweeping through a community, something everyone goes through together; ahead lies Leo 4, a man in formal clothes beside a deer whose antlers are folded back. By her rule the shared wave gives way to a personal, chosen change, and that change leads to a picture of polish and wildness standing side by side. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 3, shows a sailor who has deserted, whose keyword is Breaking rank: a man leaving a life of uniform, beside a woman leaving behind a style that had been almost a uniform too.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Leo 2°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 3°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 2°02′ reads Leo 3, and so does one at Leo 2°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 4 after Leo 2°59′, or back into Leo 2 before Leo 2°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 Leo 3 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 2, Leo 4 and Aquarius 3 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
- Leo 2 and Leo 4, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aquarius 3, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Leo 2°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 3; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 2. 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: Appearance is deliberately shaped to meet the world.
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
- Leo 2: Shared affliction the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Leo 4: Civilised and wild together the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aquarius 3: Breaking rank the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
