Small birds crowded on one branch of a huge tree

The image

The picture is a branch full of birds. A great tree, its trunk too wide to circle with one's arms, holds out a branch, and along it sit lots of small birds side by side, sparrows or finches perhaps, chattering and shuffling. The line gives no season and no reason for the gathering. The contrast is of scale: the tree is vast and old, the birds tiny and quick, and the one branch is enough for all of them.

Meaning

The tradition reads its images as symbols, and the crowded branch stands for small lives sheltered by something large. Our keyword is Sheltered community, and our keynote says that small lives gather on what is big enough to hold them all. The birds have chosen to sit together, though the tree has many branches. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a love of close company, the warmth of being one among many on the same perch, and as a sense of the larger structures, families, towns, institutions, that hold people up. The image can also be read from the tree's side, as the quiet generosity of anything strong enough to carry others without noticing their weight.

Lynda Hill treats each neighbour as part of the reading, behind a placement the background and ahead of it the aim. Behind this one is Leo 27, the first light of day; ahead is Leo 29, a sea maiden, half woman, half fish. By her rule the dawn wakes the birds to their branch, and from that crowded, safe perch the next degree turns to a solitary figure who belongs fully to no one place. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 28, shows a tree cut down and sawn into lengths: the great tree given up for use, beside the living tree that shelters a whole crowd of birds.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Leo 27°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 28°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 27°27′ reads Leo 28, and so does one at Leo 27°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 29 after Leo 27°59′, or back into Leo 27 before Leo 27°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 28 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 27, Leo 29 and Aquarius 28 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 27 and Leo 29, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aquarius 28, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Leo 27°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 28; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 27. 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: Small lives gather on what is big enough to hold them all.

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 27: Beginning of awareness the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Leo 29: Between two worlds the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aquarius 28: Sacrifice for provision the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to