A man's head and nothing else

The image

The picture is a head on its own, like a bust or a portrait cropped close: a man's face, his brow, his eyes, and nothing below the neck or around him. The line gives no expression, no age and no name. Without a body there is no gesture and no posture to read, so everything is concentrated in the face and the skull behind it. It is the first image of Virgo, and it opens the sign with a single, bare form.

Meaning

The tradition reads degree images as symbols, and the lone head is a symbol of a self gathered into thought. Our keyword is The thinking self, and our keynote says that identity gathers in the head: thought, judgement and a face to show. The image is stripped down on purpose. With the rest of the man left out, what remains is what he thinks and how he looks to others, the two sides of a head. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a clear, collected mind that likes to see and judge for itself, and as the risk that comes with it, of living so much in the head that the rest of life drops out of the picture.

Lynda Hill sets the head between the degree just behind it, as ground, and the one just ahead, as aim. Before Virgo 1 comes Leo 30, a letter left open, not sealed, the last image of Leo; after it comes Virgo 2, a great white cross lifted high. By her rule the open letter, private thought laid out for anyone, gives way to a head that holds its thoughts, and the head in turn gives way to a single great symbol raised above everything else, thought followed by faith. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 1, shows the stalls of an open market: many people, goods and voices mixing freely, beside this degree's single head with nothing around it.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 0°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 1°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 0°18′ reads Virgo 1, and so does one at Virgo 0°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 2 after Virgo 0°59′, or back into Leo 30 before Virgo 0°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 Virgo 1 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Leo 30, Virgo 2 and Pisces 1 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 30 and Virgo 2, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 1, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 0°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 1; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Leo 30. 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: Identity gathers in the head: thought, judgement and a face to show.

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 30: Open confidence the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 2: Dominant faith the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 1: Exchange the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to