The image
The picture is an unexploded bomb: a charge built to go off that has not. Nothing in the image says where it lies, who set it or whether anyone is near, and nothing has been damaged. It is a still object holding a great deal of force, neither spent nor safe. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Aries 13.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the image is about force that does not reach its end. Energy has been gathered and aimed, and then nothing happens; the pressure is still there, unreleased. Our keyword is Force that fizzles, and our keynote reads it in one line: a charge meant to go off does not, and the pressure stays where it was. One way to see it in a chart is a placement where effort or anger builds and then stalls, where a dramatic outcome is expected and does not come, or where the wiser course is to let a charge be made harmless. The tradition reads it as a picture.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before as background, her Karmic Condition, and the degree after as direction, her Quest Degree. Here they are Aries 12, white geese gathered in a flock, and Aries 14, a snake curled close beside a couple. By that reading the dud comes after a scene of ordinary safety and before a scene of knowledge entering a relationship: a threat that came to nothing, then a quieter kind of disturbance. The degree opposite, Libra 13, shows children making bubbles with soapy water, fragile things that burst at a touch; set beside this degree as a reading aid, it pairs harmless bursting with a burst that never came.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 12°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 12°12′ reads Aries 13, and so does one at Aries 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 14 after Aries 12°59′, or back into Aries 12 before Aries 12°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 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 12, Aries 14 and Libra 13 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 12 and Aries 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 12°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 12. 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: A charge meant to go off does not, and the pressure stays where it was.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Aries 12: Safety in the flock the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 14: Knowledge and temptation the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 13: Fragile delight the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
