A long line of cars on the road together

The image

The picture is a procession on wheels. Many motor cars move along a road one behind the other, a long line going the same way, as on a family outing, a motor club's tour or a migration of people moving west with everything they own. The line gives no destination and no road. In 1925 the motor car was still new enough that a long line of them was a sight; it meant people on the move together, with dust and noise.

Meaning

Read as the tradition reads its images, the line of cars is a symbol of many people moving the same way at once. Our keyword is Collective migration, and our keynote says that many move together toward the same destination. Each car is separate, with its own driver, and yet the line moves as one. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a feeling for shared movements, the trends, causes and migrations that carry many individuals along together, and as the comfort, and sometimes the frustration, of travelling at the speed of the group. It can also be read as the pull of a common goal, which makes a crowd of strangers into a convoy.

Lynda Hill calls the degree behind a placement its Karmic Condition and the one ahead its Quest Degree. Before this one comes Virgo 19, swimmers racing one another, each out to win; after it comes Virgo 21, young women playing basketball as a team. By her rule the contest of individuals gives way to a line of travellers all heading the same way, and the convoy in turn gives way to a team whose members learn to move as one. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Pisces 20, shows supper laid out on the table: the meal waiting at the end of the road, beside this degree's long line of travellers still on their way.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 19°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 19°01′ reads Virgo 20, and so does one at Virgo 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 21 after Virgo 19°59′, or back into Virgo 19 before Virgo 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 19, Virgo 21 and Pisces 20 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 19 and Virgo 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 19°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 19. 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: Many move together toward the same destination.

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 19: Competitive effort the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 21: Cooperative play the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 20: Prepared nourishment the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to