The image
The picture is a summer afternoon. A huge oak spreads its branches, and from one of them hangs a swing, or several, and children are on them, going back and forth, up and down. The line gives no parents and no house, only the tree and the play. The oak is the important partner: old, wide and strong enough that nobody thinks to doubt the branch. The swinging goes out and comes back, the same arc again and again.
Meaning
Read as the tradition reads its images, the swing under the oak is a symbol of play made safe by something old and strong. Our keyword is Supported play, and our keynote says that joy is possible because something strong and old holds the rope. The children do not think about the tree; that is the point. Their freedom depends on a support they can take for granted. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a gift for carefree enjoyment that rests on a secure base, a family, a tradition, a friendship, and as gratitude for whatever holds the rope. It can also be read the other way round, as the part of a person that is the oak for others, glad to bear the weight so that someone else can fly.
Lynda Hill reads neighbours too: the earlier degree as what a placement rests on, the later as what it moves toward. Behind this one lies Leo 10, dew on the ground at dawn, the fresh start of a day; ahead lies Leo 12, a garden party on the lawn as evening falls. By her rule the morning's freshness becomes an afternoon of play under the tree, and the play grows up, in the next degree, into the easy company of adults on a lawn at dusk. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 11, shows a man in private conversation with his own inspiration: a solitary, inward joy, beside this degree's outdoor joy that children share in the open air.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Leo 10°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 11°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 10°58′ reads Leo 11, and so does one at Leo 10°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 12 after Leo 10°59′, or back into Leo 10 before Leo 10°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 11 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 10, Leo 12 and Aquarius 11 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 10 and Leo 12, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aquarius 11, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Leo 10°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 11; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 10. 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: Joy is possible because something strong and old holds the rope.
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 10: Freshness revealed the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Leo 12: Social ease the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aquarius 11: Quiet revelation the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
