The image
The picture is one large object raised into view. A cross, white and very big, stands or is held up high, above the heads of anyone nearby, so that it can be seen from far off. The line gives no church, no hill and no crowd. A cross is the central symbol of Christianity, and a white one adds the colour of purity and of light; raised high, it becomes the thing everything else is arranged around.
Meaning
Read as the tradition reads its images, the raised cross is a symbol of one meaning that organises a whole life or world. Our keyword is Dominant faith, and our keynote says that one symbol of sacrifice organises everything around it. The image is about height and centrality as much as about religion. When one sign stands above all others, everything below takes its bearings from it. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a strong central conviction, religious or not, that gives order and direction, and as the question of what such a conviction asks one to give up. The size of the cross can be read both ways, as reassurance and as weight.
In Lynda Hill's way of reading, the cross stands between a background behind and an aim ahead. The background here is Virgo 1, the head of a man, nothing more, thought on its own; the aim is Virgo 3, a pair of angels come to guard. By her rule the solitary thinking head gives way to a single great symbol lifted above the crowd, and the symbol gives way to a picture of unseen protectors arriving, faith followed by the care it hopes for. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 2, shows a squirrel keeping out of the hunters' sight: a small creature staying hidden for safety, beside this degree's great sign raised to be seen by all.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 1°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 1°55′ reads Virgo 2, and so does one at Virgo 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 3 after Virgo 1°59′, or back into Virgo 1 before Virgo 1°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 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 1, Virgo 3 and Pisces 2 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
- Virgo 1 and Virgo 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Pisces 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Virgo 1°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 1. 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: One symbol of sacrifice organises everything around it.
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
- Virgo 1: The thinking self the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Virgo 3: Protection the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Pisces 2: Self-protection the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
