The image
The line is one of the shortest in the set: a rabbi, with no setting and no action. The picture is filled in by what the word carries: a teacher and leader of a Jewish community, a reader of scripture and its commentaries, someone whose learning is put at the service of a living tradition. We describe the figure with respect and read it as a symbol only.
Elsie Wheeler described this image to Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park in 1925.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the rabbi stands for observance in its full sense: attention paid, day after day, to what a tradition asks. Our keyword is "Faithful observance", and our keynote says that tradition is served carefully, day by day. The image can be read as a love of continuity, of learning that is handed down and interpreted afresh by each generation, and of practices whose worth lies partly in their being kept. A placement here might show in someone who is careful with inheritance, whether religious, cultural or professional, and who finds freedom inside a discipline rather than outside it.
In Lynda Hill's practice Libra 20 is read between two neighbours, the Karmic Condition behind it and the Quest Degree ahead. Libra 19, thieves hiding and waiting, is the degree before; Libra 21, crowds at ease on the beach, is the degree after. Between something that lurks outside the community's terms and a crowd simply enjoying a day off, the rabbi holds the middle place of the one who keeps the terms alive.
Opposite is Aries 20, a little girl putting out food for birds in winter, our "Care in hard seasons". As a reading aid, the pair joins two forms of faithful care: a child's small kindness in the cold, and a teacher's lifelong service to what his people have carried.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Libra 19°00′ up to, but not including, Libra 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Libra 19°31′ reads Libra 20, and so does one at Libra 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Libra 21 after Libra 19°59′, or back into Libra 19 before Libra 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 Libra 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Libra 19, Libra 21 and Aries 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
- Libra 19 and Libra 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aries 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Libra 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Libra 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Libra 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: Tradition is served faithfully, day by day.
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
- Libra 19: Concealed threat the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Libra 21: Mass relaxation the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aries 20: Care in hard seasons the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Libra in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
