Neighbours raising a house together

The image

The picture is of the old custom of a house-raising: a frame of timber, a crowd of neighbours with hammers and ropes, the walls hauled upright by many hands in a single day. There is food to be shared afterwards, and the house belongs to one family, but it went up because everyone came. The line keeps to the gathering and the building.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the house-raising is cooperation in its most practical form. No one could do it alone, and the work is given freely, on the understanding that help flows both ways. Our keyword is "Building together", and our keynote says neighbours give their work so that a house goes up. A placement here can be read as a gift for joining effort with others, a pleasure in common projects, and a sense that a home or a plan is stronger when many hands have shaped it. The image is warm and busy, and it measures success in walls that stand.

Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Scorpio 3 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Here the degree before is Scorpio 2, perfume running from a broken bottle; the degree after is Scorpio 4, a young person holding a lit candle. The three pictures can be followed as something fine spilt and lost, a house raised by common effort, and a single flame carried carefully by someone new to the task.

The opposite degree is Taurus 3, steps rising to a grassy lawn where clover grows, our "Easy ascent". Set beside it as a reading aid, the gentle climb to a pleasant place contrasts with the hard collective work of building one: two ways of arriving at a place to live well.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 2°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 3°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 2°32′ reads Scorpio 3, and so does one at Scorpio 2°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 4 after Scorpio 2°59′, or back into Scorpio 2 before Scorpio 2°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 Scorpio 3 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 2, Scorpio 4 and Taurus 3 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

Scorpio 2 and Scorpio 4, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Taurus 3, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Scorpio 2°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 3; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 2. 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: Neighbours give their work so that a house goes up.

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

• Scorpio 2: Spilled fragrance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Scorpio 4: Carrying the flame the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Taurus 3: Easy ascent the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to