The image
The picture is double: a man asleep, and inside his sleep a dream in which fairies appear. The line gives no bedroom and no night sky, only the sleeper and what visits him. Fairies are small, quick, playful figures of folk tale, never quite to be caught, and in a dream they can be as vivid as anything seen awake. The man does nothing; he simply sleeps and the fairies come.
Meaning
The tradition reads its images as symbols, and an image of a dream invites a reading close to the dream itself. Our keyword is Dreams of fairies, and our keynote says that in sleep the mind meets small figures of delight and wonder. Nothing in the picture is frightening; the fairies are a gift of the night. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a lively imagination that comes out when the busy, judging mind is at rest, a source of fancy, play and quiet inspiration, and as a reminder that the most practical people dream too. Placed early in Virgo, a sign often linked with order and detail, it shows the sorting mind letting go for a while.
With Lynda Hill, the dream degree is read between its background and its heading. The background here is Virgo 4, children of different colours playing together, a game in daylight; the heading is Virgo 6, a carousel turning. By her rule the children's waking play is followed by a dream of fairies, and the dream gives way to the painted horses of a fairground ride, imagination made into a ride that anyone can climb aboard. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 5, shows a sale of goods held by a church: a busy, practical gathering of neighbours giving and buying, beside this degree's sleeping man, alone with his small visitors.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 4°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 5°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 4°46′ reads Virgo 5, and so does one at Virgo 4°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 6 after Virgo 4°59′, or back into Virgo 4 before Virgo 4°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 5 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 4, Virgo 6 and Pisces 5 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 4 and Virgo 6, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Pisces 5, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Virgo 4°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 5; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 4. 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: In sleep the mind meets small figures of delight and wonder.
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 4: Natural equality the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Virgo 6: Circular motion the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Pisces 5: Fellowship through giving the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
