Swimmers racing side by side through the water

The image

The picture is a race in water. Several swimmers, in a pool, a lake or the sea, are going flat out side by side, arms turning, heads turning for breath, each trying to touch first. The line gives no prize and no crowd. Water is a resistant element; every stroke has to push it out of the way, and the swimmer who wastes the least effort goes fastest. Competition here is close and physical, lane beside lane.

Meaning

The tradition reads its images as symbols, and the race stands for skill tested against others in a medium that pushes back. Our keyword is Competitive effort, and our keynote says that skill in a resistant element is tested against others. The water matters as much as the rivals. Nobody wins by thrashing; it takes technique, rhythm and breath. One way to read a placement in this degree is as an appetite for testing oneself, a pleasure in measured effort and fair contest, and as the knowledge that the real opponent is often the element itself, the drag of circumstance, which can be met only with skill and practice. The picture also shows company: competitors push each other faster than either would go alone.

After Lynda Hill's practice, the race is read between a background, the degree behind, and a heading, the degree ahead. Behind this one lies Virgo 18, a talking board on the table, people reaching quietly for the unseen; ahead lies Virgo 20, a long line of motor cars travelling together. By her rule the still parlour gives way to bodies racing in the water, and the race, where each goes for themselves, gives way to a long convoy where everyone goes the same way together. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 19, shows a pupil taught by a master: learning handed down patiently from one to another, beside this degree's learning tested against rivals in open water.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 18°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 18°24′ reads Virgo 19, and so does one at Virgo 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 20 after Virgo 18°59′, or back into Virgo 18 before Virgo 18°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 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 18, Virgo 20 and Pisces 19 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 18 and Virgo 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 18°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 18. 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: Skill in a resistant element is tested against others.

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 18: Reaching for hidden guidance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 20: Collective migration the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 19: Transmission the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to