The image
The picture is a single gesture at a wedding. A bride stands veiled, her face behind lace or tulle, and someone lifts or pulls the veil away. The line does not say who does it, the groom, a parent or a stranger, nor whether it happens at the right moment in the ceremony or suddenly, unexpectedly. It gives only the uncovering: the face that was hidden by custom is now in plain view.
Meaning
Read as the tradition reads its images, the bride's unveiling is a symbol of something hidden by convention brought into view. Our keyword is Unveiling, and our keynote says that what was hidden by convention is suddenly exposed. A veil is part of a rite; it hides the bride not because there is anything shameful but because the custom asks for it. Pulling it off ends the custom's protection. One way to read a placement in this degree is as an urge to see and show things as they are, behind the forms and politeness, and as the question of timing and consent that every unveiling raises: there is a difference between a veil lifted when the moment comes and one pulled away.
Lynda Hill's practice puts the unveiling between what precedes it and what follows it. The background here is Virgo 11, a son shaped by the hopes his mother holds for him, a life formed out of sight; the aim is Virgo 13, political frenzy calmed by a firm hand. By her rule the private shaping is followed by a public uncovering, and the uncovering by a crowd's uproar that has to be steadied, exposure leading to excitement and then to control. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 12, shows initiates under examination: people whose inner readiness is being tested and brought into view, beside this degree's bride whose face is suddenly brought into view.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 11°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 11°05′ reads Virgo 12, and so does one at Virgo 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 13 after Virgo 11°59′, or back into Virgo 11 before Virgo 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 11, Virgo 13 and Pisces 12 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 11 and Virgo 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Pisces 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Virgo 11°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 11. 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: What was hidden by convention is suddenly exposed.
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 11: Moulded by expectation the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Virgo 13: Firm control the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Pisces 12: Under examination the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
