A mermaid, half on land and half in the sea

The image

The picture is a figure from sailors' tales and folk stories. A sea maiden, a mermaid, is a woman above the waist and a fish below, and the line gives only that, without a rock, a ship or a song. She is at home in the water, where her tail is strong, and she can come to the shore, where her human half can look and speak, but she cannot walk on land.

Meaning

Read as the tradition reads its images, the sea maiden is a symbol of a nature divided between two elements. Our keyword is Between two worlds, and our keynote says that a figure belongs half to the sea and half to the land. In the old stories the sea is feeling, depth and the unknown, the land is human order and daylight, and the mermaid can visit each without staying in either. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a gift for moving between inner and outer life, or between two communities, and as the loneliness that can come with being fully at home nowhere. The figure is also a picture of beauty that is strange to everyone, which is part of why the stories keep telling it.

Lynda Hill's practice frames each degree with its background, the degree before, and its heading, the degree after. The background here is Leo 28, small birds crowded along one branch of a huge tree, a crowd that belongs together; the heading is Leo 30, a letter left open, not sealed, the last image of Leo. By her rule the crowded branch gives way to a lone figure between two elements, and the mermaid, who keeps one half hidden underwater, is followed by a letter that hides nothing at all. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Aquarius 29, shows a butterfly working its way out of the chrysalis: a creature passing from one form to another, beside this degree's creature that stays forever half of each.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Leo 28°00′ up to, but not including, Leo 29°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Leo 28°04′ reads Leo 29, and so does one at Leo 28°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Leo 30 after Leo 28°59′, or back into Leo 28 before Leo 28°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 29 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 28, Leo 30 and Aquarius 29 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 28 and Leo 30, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aquarius 29, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Leo 28°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Leo 29; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 28. 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 figure belongs half to the sea and half to the land.

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 28: Sheltered community the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Leo 30: Open confidence the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aquarius 29: Metamorphosis the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Leo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to