The image
Word has gone round that gold has been struck, and people are on the move: on foot, on horseback, in wagons, with picks and pans, all heading the same way. The picture recalls the gold rushes of the nineteenth century, when whole towns sprang up overnight around a find. It is described here as an image of a crowd drawn by a promise, and nothing in it is a statement about anyone's own gains or losses.
Elsie Wheeler described this image to Marc Edmund Jones in 1925; until 2026-10-10 our table printed a line close to Rudhyar's 1973 rewording, and our own line replaced it.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the gold rush is about attraction and what it does to people. A promise, true or false, can empty a town and fill a valley; it gives energy, courage and purpose, and it can also make people forget what they left behind. Our keyword is "Lure of gold", and our keynote says the promise of gold draws people far from settled life. A placement here can be read as a capacity for enthusiasm and venture, a readiness to go where something shines, and the question of what is really being sought. The gold in the picture can stand for any prize that makes the ordinary seem dull.
The opposite degree, Taurus 6, shows workers building a bridge over a ravine, our "Spanning the gap". As a reading aid, the two pictures are both about crossing into new ground, one by a rush toward a prize and the other by the slow, shared work of joining one side to the other.
Read the way Lynda Hill reads a chart, Scorpio 6 looks back to a Karmic Condition and forward to a Quest Degree. Before Scorpio 6 is Scorpio 5, a coast of great rocks; after it is Scorpio 7, divers going down into the deep sea. From what stands still, the pictures go to a crowd in motion over land, and then downward into the ocean.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 5°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 6°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 5°23′ reads Scorpio 6, and so does one at Scorpio 5°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 7 after Scorpio 5°59′, or back into Scorpio 5 before Scorpio 5°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 6 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 5, Scorpio 7 and Taurus 6 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 5 and Scorpio 7, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 6, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 5°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 6; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 5. 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 promise of gold draws people far from settled life.
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
- Scorpio 5: Resistance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 7: Descent into depth the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 6: Spanning the gap the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
