Children of every colour playing as one group

The image

The picture is a group of children absorbed in a game, and they are of different colours: Black, white, brown, whatever mix a playground holds. The line gives no game and no place, and it does not say that anyone remarks on the difference. That is the point of the image. For the children the colours do not decide who plays with whom; the game does.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, which is how the tradition reads every degree image, the mixed group of children is about the ease with which life mixes before it is divided. Our keyword is Natural equality, and our keynote says that before it is taught otherwise, life mixes freely. The image was recorded in 1925 in a country of segregated schools, which gives it an edge it would not have in every time and place. One way to read a placement in this degree is as an instinct for fairness and for friendship across lines that adults draw, and as a readiness to see people first and categories second. It can also be read as a question: what is learned later that was not there in the game.

For the children's game, Lynda Hill's rule supplies a background in the degree before and a direction in the degree after. Before this degree comes Virgo 3, a pair of angels come to guard; after it comes Virgo 5, fairies appearing in a sleeping man's dreams. By her rule the guardians arriving give way to children playing freely, as though that were what they had come to protect, and the waking game gives way to a dream world of small, delightful figures. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 4, shows a narrow neck of land crowded with traffic: many people squeezed through one passage, beside this degree's many children who make room for one another without being squeezed.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 3°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 4°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 3°09′ reads Virgo 4, and so does one at Virgo 3°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 5 after Virgo 3°59′, or back into Virgo 3 before Virgo 3°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 4 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 3, Virgo 5 and Pisces 4 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 3 and Virgo 5, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 4, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 3°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 4; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 3. 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: Before it is taught otherwise, life mixes freely.

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

• Virgo 3: Protection the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 5: Dreams of fairies the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 4: Congested passage the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to