The image
The image shows two women, both unmarried and both prim: upright, careful and correct in manner. They are together, but the picture gives them no conversation and no action; what it shows is how they hold themselves and that they hold themselves alike. The women have no names, ages or setting, and the picture does not explain why they are together.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the two women show a companionship built on restraint. They need not say much; long acquaintance and a shared code of conduct keep them close, and their reserve protects as well as limits. Our keyword is Shared reserve, and our keynote reads it in one line: companionship can rest on restraint and long acquaintance rather than words. The tradition would take a placement here as a place where privacy, dignity and self-command are valued, and where loyalty is shown by steadiness rather than display. The image passes no judgement on a single life; it shows a bond of a particular, quiet kind.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before and after a placement as its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree. Before Aries 17 comes Aries 16, the brownies dancing at sunset; after it comes Aries 18, an empty hammock that nobody is lying in. By her rule, carefree play gives way to composure, and composure looks toward a rest that is offered but not yet taken. Opposite, Libra 17 is a sea captain who has left the sea, experience brought ashore; read beside this degree as a reading aid, it sets a life of travel now at rest beside a life of careful, settled reserve.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 16°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 17°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 16°40′ reads Aries 17, and so does one at Aries 16°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 18 after Aries 16°59′, or back into Aries 16 before Aries 16°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 Aries 17 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 16, Aries 18 and Libra 17 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
- Aries 16 and Aries 18, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 17, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 16°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 17; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 16. 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: Companionship can rest on restraint and long acquaintance rather than words.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Aries 16: Evening merriment the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 18: Rest not taken the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 17: Experience at rest the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
