Old friends sitting down to an evening meal

The image

A table set for the evening, a gathering of friends, food passed from hand to hand. The picture suggests a reunion more than a party: people who have known one another a long time, perhaps through shared work or shared trouble, coming back together. The meal is the occasion, but the talk is the point. Jones took the picture down in San Diego in 1925 from Elsie Wheeler's description of the card for Scorpio 10.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the evening meal is about renewal of a bond. Friendship is not only formed but kept, and the keeping happens in ordinary rituals like this one. Our keyword is "Bond renewed", and our keynote says those who shared a past meet to confirm what still joins them. A placement here can be read as loyalty and a gift for companionship, a love of reunions, and a sense that a shared table is one of the oldest ways of saying who belongs. The image is warm without being sentimental: it shows people choosing one another again.

The degree opposite is Taurus 10, a nurse wearing the Red Cross, our "Impartial care", an image of help given to anyone, regardless of side. As a reading aid, the pair sets care for whoever is in need beside care for those one already knows: two faces of looking after people.

Lynda Hill would read Scorpio 10 with its Karmic Condition, the degree before, and its Quest Degree, the degree after. Here those are Scorpio 9, with its dentist mending teeth, and Scorpio 11, someone pulling a man out of deep water. From skilled care at close quarters, the pictures turn to a shared table, and then to help arriving at the moment of being overwhelmed.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 9°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 9°51′ reads Scorpio 10, and so does one at Scorpio 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 11 after Scorpio 9°59′, or back into Scorpio 9 before Scorpio 9°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 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 9, Scorpio 11 and Taurus 10 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 9 and Scorpio 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Taurus 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Scorpio 9°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 9. 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: Those who shared a past meet to confirm what still joins them.

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 9: Repairing what bites the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Scorpio 11: Saved from the deep the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Taurus 10: Impartial care the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to