A camel plodding steadily across the desert

The image

The picture is a long crossing. A large camel walks across sand, with dunes or flat desert around it, under a hot sky. The line gives no rider, no caravan and no destination, only the animal and the ground it is crossing. Camels are built for this: broad feet for loose sand, a body that can go a long time between wells. Its pace is slow and steady, and it keeps it up.

Meaning

Read as the tradition reads its images, the camel is a symbol of endurance through a long, dry stretch. Our keyword is Endurance, and our keynote says that a long, dry passage is survived by what was stored beforehand. What the camel relies on is preparation; it does not find water in the desert, it brings its resources with it. One way to read a placement in this degree is as staying power, the ability to keep going through a long period with little outside support, and as the wisdom of storing up strength in good times. The camel also looks awkward and is not graceful, and the picture suggests that endurance seldom looks heroic from outside.

Lynda Hill's rule reads the degree before as background and the degree after as heading. The background here is Leo 24, a dishevelled, scruffy man, careless of appearance; the heading is Leo 26, a rainbow arching overhead. By her rule the man who has let his outside go is followed by an animal whose strength is all inside, and after the long dry crossing the next degree gives the desert's opposite, rain and light together in a band of colour. The opposite degree, Aquarius 25, read beside it as an aid, is a butterfly whose right wing is better made than the left: an uneven, delicate creature of the air, beside this even, tireless creature of the sand.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Leo 24°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 24°36′ reads Leo 25, and so does one at Leo 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 26 after Leo 24°59′, or back into Leo 24 before Leo 24°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 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 24, Leo 26 and Aquarius 25 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 24 and Leo 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aquarius 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Leo 24°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 24. 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 long, dry passage is survived by what was stored beforehand.

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 24: Careless appearance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Leo 26: Bridge of colour the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aquarius 25: Uneven development the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to