An old sea captain in his rocking chair

The image

The picture is a retired seafarer at home. The captain is old now, and instead of a bridge or a deck he has a rocking chair, which sways the way a ship does, gently and for as long as he likes. The line gives no porch or window, no pipe or chart, nothing but the man and the chair. A ship's captain has carried responsibility for crews and cargo across open water; this one has set that down.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, which is how the tradition reads every degree image, the old captain is about rest that has been earned. Our keyword is Earned rest, and our keynote says that a life of voyages settles into quiet recollection. The rocking chair is a lovely detail: it keeps a little of the sea's motion in a room that does not move. One way to read a placement in this degree is as the ability to look back over long effort with some peace, to tell the stories of past voyages and to let others take the wheel. It does not have to mean old age. At any time of life it can stand for the pause after a long stretch of responsibility, when memory does the travelling.

On Lynda Hill's reading the captain's degree sits between what came before it and what comes next. Behind this one is Leo 12, a garden party on the lawn as evening falls; ahead is Leo 14, the human soul waiting for a chance to express itself. By her rule the company of the evening thins to one old man rocking, and from that rest the next degree turns inward, to a life within that has not yet had its say. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 13, shows a barometer measuring the air's pressure: an instrument every captain watched for changes in the weather, beside a captain who no longer has to watch it.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Leo 12°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 12°12′ reads Leo 13, and so does one at Leo 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 14 after Leo 12°59′, or back into Leo 12 before Leo 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 Leo 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 12, Leo 14 and Aquarius 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

Leo 12 and Leo 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aquarius 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Leo 12°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 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 life of voyages settles into quiet recollection.

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

• Leo 12: Social ease the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Leo 14: Waiting to be expressed the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aquarius 13: Reading the pressure the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to