Mary and the little white lamb at her heels

The image

Anyone who learned English nursery rhymes knows this picture: Mary walking along, and behind her a small lamb, fleece as white as snow, trotting at her heels. The line gives only the lamb, its colour and the girl it follows. In the rhyme the lamb even follows her to school, which is against the rule and makes the children laugh and play. The image keeps the plainness of the verse; there is no shepherd and no flock, just one animal that has chosen one person.

Meaning

The tradition reads degree images as symbols, and a picture this familiar is read for the feeling it carries rather than for the story. Our keyword is Innocent devotion, and our keynote says that trust and affection follow wherever one goes. Nobody trained the lamb; it follows because it loves her. One way to read a placement in this degree is as the gift of inspiring simple, faithful affection, in children, animals or friends, and as the responsibility that comes with being followed. It can also be read from the lamb's side, as a whole-hearted loyalty that does not stop to ask whether the school allows it.

Lynda Hill's method looks one degree each way: behind for context, ahead for direction. Behind lies Virgo 23, a man who trains animals, mastery won by nerve and practice; ahead lies Virgo 25, a flag lowered halfway down its pole. By her rule the trained animals of the ring give way to a lamb that follows for love alone, and after that most innocent of pictures the next degree turns to a whole community pausing in mourning, tenderness meeting loss. As a reading aid only, the opposite degree, Pisces 24, shows an island where people live: a bounded place where everyone stays close, beside a lamb whose closeness goes wherever Mary goes.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Virgo 23°00′ up to, but not including, Virgo 24°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Virgo 23°29′ reads Virgo 24, and so does one at Virgo 23°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Virgo 25 after Virgo 23°59′, or back into Virgo 23 before Virgo 23°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 24 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 23, Virgo 25 and Pisces 24 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 23 and Virgo 25, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Pisces 24, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Virgo 23°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Virgo 24; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 23. 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: Trust and affection follow wherever one goes.

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 23: Mastering force the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Virgo 25: Public mourning the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Pisces 24: Bounded community the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Virgo in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to