One race's light crossing into the next

The image

There is no figure in this picture, only a light and a crossing. Something luminous that belonged to one stage of humanity moves over to the stage that follows, the way a flame is passed from one lamp to another. The numbered races echo the Theosophical teaching of successive root races of humankind, an idea Jones himself drew on when he called the Sumerians the heirs of one of them; we record it as lore, not as history. "Race" here means an age of humanity in that teaching, not a people.

Meaning

The image can be read as a picture of handing on. A light is not divided when it passes; the one who gives it keeps it, and the one who receives it starts from where the giver arrived. Our keyword, "Passing the light on", and our keynote, that what one age has learned is handed on as the start of the next, take the picture this way: as continuity across a change of generation, of era or of method. A placement here can be read as a concern with what is inherited and what is carried forward, and with the moment of transfer itself, when the old form ends and its light goes on in a new one.

Lynda Hill sets Libra 2 between its Karmic Condition, one degree back, and its Quest Degree, one degree on. Here the degree before is Libra 1, the butterfly fixed by a dart, a living thing brought to completion; the degree after is Libra 3, a dawn on which everything looks different. Read in that order, something is finished, its light is passed across, and a new day opens on a changed world.

Opposite lies Aries 2, a comedian holding a crowd in laughter, our "Shared laughter". As a reading aid the pair contrasts two ways of reaching others: the long relay of what generations learn, and the quick, warm exchange between a performer and the people in front of him.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Libra 1°00′ up to, but not including, Libra 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Libra 1°25′ reads Libra 2, and so does one at Libra 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Libra 3 after Libra 1°59′, or back into Libra 1 before Libra 1°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 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Libra 1, Libra 3 and Aries 2 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

Libra 1 and Libra 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aries 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Libra 1°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Libra 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Libra 1. 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: What one age has learned is handed on as the start of the next.

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

• Libra 1: Perfection by sacrifice the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Libra 3: Transformation overnight the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aries 2: Shared laughter the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Libra in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to