A child makes room for birds at the fountain

The image

A public fountain on a warm day. A child has come to drink or to play, and birds have come too; the child steps back, or cups the water, or simply waits, so that they can drink first. It is a tiny moment, the sort that passes unnoticed in a park, and the picture keeps it tiny. The birds stay wild and leave when they have finished.

The image belongs to the set Elsie Wheeler described and Marc Edmund Jones recorded in 1925.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the child at the fountain offers care that does not take hold. The birds are not caught, tamed or fed by hand; they are allowed to drink and to fly. Our keyword is "Simple kindness", and our keynote says the small and the free are cared for without being owned. A placement here can be read as a natural generosity, a pleasure in helping without making the help a claim, and an instinct for leaving room. That a child does this matters to the image: the kindness comes before any idea of duty or reward.

Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Libra 22 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Before Libra 22 lie the crowds of Libra 21, at rest on the sand; after it comes Libra 23, Chanticleer the rooster, crowing proudly. The three pictures move from a crowd at ease, to one quiet gift at a fountain, to a bird that wants everyone to hear him.

Opposite stands Aries 22, a gate that opens on a garden of longing, our "At the garden gate". Read beside it as an aid, the two images both turn on water, gardens and openness: in one the desired place lies beyond a gate still to be opened, in the other the gift is given freely in a public square.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Libra 21°00′ up to, but not including, Libra 22°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Libra 21°45′ reads Libra 22, and so does one at Libra 21°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Libra 23 after Libra 21°59′, or back into Libra 21 before Libra 21°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 22 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Libra 21, Libra 23 and Aries 22 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 21 and Libra 23, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Aries 22, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Libra 21°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Libra 22; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Libra 21. 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 small and the free are cared for without being owned.

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 21: Mass relaxation the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Libra 23: Proud crowing the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Aries 22: At the garden gate the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Libra in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to