The image
It is winter, and a little girl scatters crumbs or seed for the birds. The picture is small in scale: a child, the cold, the birds that come down to eat. Food is scarce for them at this time of year, so what she gives matters more than it would in summer. Nothing is asked in return. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Aries 20.
Meaning
The tradition reads the image as kindness that comes when it is most needed. Generosity is easy in a season of plenty; in winter even a handful of seed can decide whether a bird gets through the day. Our keyword is Care in hard seasons, and our keynote reads it in one line: kindness given when conditions are harsh sustains life that would otherwise fail. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where a person tends to others in difficult times, often in small, practical ways, and where care is offered simply because it is needed. The child in the picture is not a hero; she is doing what she can.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before as the Karmic Condition and the degree after as the Quest Degree. The one before is Aries 19, the magic carpet in flight; the one after is Aries 21, a boxer stepping into the ring. Read by her rule, the girl brings imagination back down to a real, cold garden, and the next image turns care into the readiness to face a contest. As a reading aid, the degree opposite is Libra 20, a rabbi: a figure of faithful observance set beside this degree's simple, unceremonious care.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 19°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 19°31′ reads Aries 20, and so does one at Aries 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 21 after Aries 19°59′, or back into Aries 19 before Aries 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 19, Aries 21 and Libra 20 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 19 and Aries 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 19. 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: Kindness given when conditions are harsh sustains life that would otherwise fail.
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 19: Imagination that travels the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 21: Readiness to contend the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 20: Faithful observance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
