The image
This is a picture of transformation in both directions. The eagle, all talons and command, turns into a dove, large and white; the dove, soft and peaceable, becomes an eagle again. The line does not stop at either bird. It shows the change going on, back and forth, so that neither shape is final.
Like the rest of the set, the image comes from Elsie Wheeler's session with Marc Edmund Jones in San Diego in 1925. Before 2026-10-10 our table printed a line close to Rudhyar's 1973 rewording here; this page carries our own line.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the eagle and the dove are the familiar pair of force and peace, and the image refuses to set them against each other. Each turns into the other, as though they were one bird seen in two moods. Our keyword is "Power and peace exchanged", and our keynote says two opposite principles are shown to be one, alternating. A placement here can be read as the ability to move between firmness and gentleness as a situation needs, or as an inner tension between the urge to command and the wish for calm. The image suggests that neither has to win.
The opposite degree, Aries 26, is a man given so many gifts that they spill from his hands, our "Overflowing talent". As a reading aid, the pair joins two kinds of abundance: more than one person can hold, and more than one form a single creature can take.
Lynda Hill treats the degree just before Libra 26 as its Karmic Condition and the degree just after as its Quest Degree. Before Libra 26 is Libra 25, an autumn leaf read as a message; after it is Libra 27, an aeroplane holding still high overhead. From a small sign on the ground, the pictures rise to a bird changing shape in the air, and then to a machine hanging motionless above everything.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Libra 25°00′ up to, but not including, Libra 26°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Libra 25°13′ reads Libra 26, and so does one at Libra 25°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Libra 27 after Libra 25°59′, or back into Libra 25 before Libra 25°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 26 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Libra 25, Libra 27 and Aries 26 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 25 and Libra 27, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Aries 26, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Libra 25°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Libra 26; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Libra 25. 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: Two opposite principles are shown to be one, alternating.
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 25: A sign in nature the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Libra 27: Elevated perspective the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Aries 26: Overflowing talent the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Libra in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
