An animal trainer working with powerful beasts

The image

Big cats on pedestals, a horse at liberty in a ring, dogs that jump through hoops: the line gives none of these particulars, only a man whose work is training animals. Training is slow and daily. It means learning how each animal moves and what it fears, rewarding the small step, and keeping calm in front of creatures that could overpower a person in a second. In the circus of the 1920s the trainer was a star turn; outside the ring, the same skill belonged to farmers, shepherds and stable hands.

Meaning

As a symbol, which is how the tradition takes every degree's picture, the trainer is about power governed by skill rather than by force. Our keyword is Mastering force, and our keynote says that raw power is governed by nerve and practice. The animals are stronger than the man, and both of them know it; what he has is patience, timing and a steady face. One way to read a placement in this degree is as an ability to work with strong energies, in oneself or in others, without being run by them, and as the long practice such mastery takes. The image can also be read for respect, since good trainers do not break an animal's spirit but learn to work with it.

Lynda Hill names the degree behind a placement its Karmic Condition and the one ahead its Quest Degree, and reads them as where it comes from and where it goes. Behind this degree is Virgo 22, the heraldic arms of a royal house, authority by birth; ahead is Virgo 24, a white lamb trailing after Mary. By her rule the inherited emblem gives way to authority earned in the ring, and the trainer's hard-won mastery gives way to an animal that follows out of simple trust, no training needed. The opposite degree, Pisces 23, can be set beside it as a reading aid: spirit phenomena of the kind spiritists report, contact sought with what cannot be seen or held, against this very physical work with what can.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 22°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 22°52′ reads Virgo 23, and so does one at Virgo 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 24 after Virgo 22°59′, or back into Virgo 22 before Virgo 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 22, Virgo 24 and Pisces 23 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 22 and Virgo 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 22°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 22. 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: Raw power is governed by nerve and practice.

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 22: Inherited status the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 24: Innocent devotion the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 23: Contact with the unseen the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to