The image
The picture is a small, fine thing. A handkerchief, but not one for everyday use: it is made for show, with lace edges, embroidery or a monogram, the kind tucked into a breast pocket or carried at a wedding and then folded away in tissue paper. The line gives no owner and no occasion. Such handkerchiefs were often handed down, so the object carries the hours of a maker's needlework and the memory of whoever carried it before.
Meaning
The tradition reads its images as symbols, and the fine handkerchief is a symbol of refinement kept and passed on. Our keyword is Refined heirloom, and our keynote says that delicacy handed down keeps its value through generations. The thing is useless in the ordinary sense and precious in another. One way to read a placement in this degree is as an eye for detail and craft, a love of fine work and of the small objects that carry a family's or a culture's taste, and as care for what is fragile and easily lost. It can also be read with a lighter touch, as a liking for a little ceremony in daily life, the flourish that says an occasion matters.
Lynda Hill's reading lets the degree behind show the ground and the degree ahead show the reach. The background here is Virgo 14, a chart of a family's ancestry, a record of descent; the direction is Virgo 16, an orangutan, the great red ape. By her rule the family record becomes an object handed down within it, and after that most refined of things the next degree sets beside us the most untamed of our animal relatives. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 15, shows an officer getting ready to put his troops through drill: discipline repeated until it is perfect, beside this degree's delicacy made once and kept for generations.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 14°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 14°56′ reads Virgo 15, and so does one at Virgo 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 16 after Virgo 14°59′, or back into Virgo 14 before Virgo 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 14, Virgo 16 and Pisces 15 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 14 and Virgo 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Pisces 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Virgo 14°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 14. 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: Delicacy handed down keeps its value through generations.
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.
