The image
The picture is small and still: a butterfly, a dart through its body, and a perfection that arrives only once the wings stop moving. It brings to mind a collector's specimen on a board, where a living thing becomes an object fit to be studied and kept. The line does not say who threw the dart or why; it holds only the moment and what it leaves.
Elsie Wheeler described the picture to Marc Edmund Jones in San Diego in 1925.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the dart and the butterfly put a question about finishing things. To make something complete is often to stop it: a moment fixed in a photograph, a draft declared final, a feeling given a name and so held still. Our keyword, "Perfection by sacrifice", and our keynote, that a living thing is made complete only by giving up its freedom, keep both sides in view: the gain is real, and so is what is surrendered. One way to see a placement here is as a pull toward finish and form, with the reminder that form takes something from movement.
By Lynda Hill's rule, Libra 1 has its Karmic Condition just behind it and its Quest Degree just ahead. Before this one stands Virgo 30, a man so taken up with his work that a call that was never real goes past him unheard. After it comes Libra 2, our "Passing the light on", where what one age has learned is handed to the next. Between the two, the pinned butterfly can be read as the point where absorbed work is fixed into a shape others can receive.
The degree opposite, Aries 1, shows a woman fresh from the sea in a seal's embrace, our "Emergence; first consciousness". Set beside it as a reading aid, the two pictures face each other across the wheel: something rising raw and alive out of the water, and something living brought to a still, finished form.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Libra 0°00′ up to, but not including, Libra 1°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Libra 0°48′ reads Libra 1, and so does one at Libra 0°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Libra 2 after Libra 0°59′, or back into Virgo 30 before Libra 0°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 Libra 1 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Virgo 30, Libra 2 and Aries 1 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 30 and Libra 2, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aries 1, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Libra 0°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Libra 1; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Virgo 30. 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: Something living is made complete only at the cost of its freedom.
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
- Virgo 30: Focus on the task the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Libra 2: Passing the light on the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aries 1: Emergence; first consciousness the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Libra in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
