The image
The picture is the first minutes of a day. The ground is covered with dew: drops on grass, leaves and spider threads, left by the cool of the night and showing now that light has come. The line gives no person and no place, only the time and the wetness. Dew forms in still air and goes as soon as the sun warms the ground, so the picture is of something that is fresh and brief at once.
Meaning
The tradition reads degree images as symbols, and this one is a symbol of what the night leaves for the morning to find. Our keyword is Freshness revealed, and our keynote says that what the night leaves behind lies fresh on everything at daybreak. Nobody puts the dew there; it gathers by itself while everything is still. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a quality of renewal that comes without effort, the clear mind after sleep or the new view after a hard night, and as the gift of noticing small, passing beauty before it is gone. The dew is also a reminder that much of what refreshes is made in the dark and only seen in the light.
By Lynda Hill's practice, the dew lies between a background and a heading, the degrees on either side. The background here is Leo 9, the craftsman blowing glass in the heat of a furnace; the heading is Leo 11, children swinging back and forth under a giant oak. By her rule the heat and skill of the workshop give way to the coolness of the morning ground, and from the dewy grass the next degree turns to play in the shade of an old tree. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 10, shows popularity that does not last: acclaim that rises and falls, set beside dew, which also does not last and asks nobody for applause.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Leo 9°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 9°21′ reads Leo 10, and so does one at Leo 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 11 after Leo 9°59′, or back into Leo 9 before Leo 9°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 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 9, Leo 11 and Aquarius 10 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 9 and Leo 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aquarius 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Leo 9°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 9. 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: What the night leaves behind lies fresh on everything at daybreak.
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
- Leo 9: Shaping glass the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Leo 11: Supported play the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aquarius 10: Fleeting acclaim the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
