The image
The picture is horse and rider with nothing between them. There is no saddle and perhaps no stirrups; the rider sits on the horse's bare back, feeling every movement of its muscles and keeping on by balance and grip. The line does not say how fast they go or where. Riding bareback is how many people first learned on farms and in the circus ring alike; it needs no gear, only feel.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, which is how the tradition reads every degree image, the bareback rider is about poise without support. Our keyword is Balance without a saddle, and our keynote says that riding with nothing between rider and horse asks for poise and trust. Without a saddle the rider cannot rely on equipment; everything comes from the body and from a working understanding with the animal. One way to read a placement in this degree is as confidence in direct contact, a liking for doing things without the usual supports, and as a sensitivity to the moods of whatever carries one along, a team, a project, a feeling. The trust runs both ways, since the horse has to accept a rider it can feel so closely.
Through Lynda Hill's practice, the rider is read between the degree behind, as background, and the degree ahead, as aim. Behind this degree lies Leo 22, the homing pigeon carrying its message, sure of the way; ahead lies Leo 24, a dishevelled, scruffy man. By her rule the pigeon's trained sense of direction becomes the rider's trained sense of balance, and after that poised, exposed figure the next degree shows a man who has let his outward appearance go entirely. The opposite degree, Aquarius 23, read beside it as an aid, is a large bear seated with all four paws waving: a heavy body playing without any balance at all, beside this degree's light body balancing on another.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Leo 22°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 22°22′ reads Leo 23, and so does one at Leo 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 24 after Leo 22°59′, or back into Leo 22 before Leo 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 22, Leo 24 and Aquarius 23 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 22 and Leo 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aquarius 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Leo 22°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 22. 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: Riding with nothing between rider and horse asks for poise and trust.
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 22: Faithful delivery the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Leo 24: Careless appearance the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aquarius 23: Clumsy play the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
