The image
The image is a hammock slung between two supports, empty. Nothing else is described: no garden, no sleeper nearby, no sign of why it is unused. A hammock exists only for idleness, swaying, being held off the ground, so an empty one is a small question left in the air: who put it up, and why is no one in it?
Meaning
The tradition reads the empty hammock as the possibility of rest, held open. The means are there; whether to use them is a choice that has not been made. Our keyword is Rest not taken, and our keynote reads the picture in one sentence: the means of rest is ready; whether to use it is the question. In a chart a placement here could be read as a place where a person has prepared for ease, pause or recovery of strength and has not yet allowed it, or where a quiet interval waits on the edge of activity. The image does not scold; it simply leaves the hammock swinging.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree, and reads them together with it. Before Aries 18 stands Aries 17, the two reserved women; after it stands Aries 19, a carpet that flies by magic. Read so, a life of composure leads to rest offered but not taken, and then to a rest of a different kind, the mind lifting off and travelling. The degree opposite, Libra 18, shows two men taken into custody; as a reading aid it pairs an enforced stop with this degree's freely offered one, and is read as an image only.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 17°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 17°17′ reads Aries 18, and so does one at Aries 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 19 after Aries 17°59′, or back into Aries 17 before Aries 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 17, Aries 19 and Libra 18 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 17 and Aries 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 17°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 17. 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: The means of rest is ready; whether to use it is the question.
Claims about it
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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.
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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.
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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 17: Shared reserve the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 19: Imagination that travels the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 18: Called to account the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
