An evening of dancing at an embassy

The image

Chandeliers, uniforms, evening dress and an orchestra: the picture is of a diplomatic occasion, a ball given at an embassy for guests from many countries. Everyone dances by the same steps, and every bow and introduction follows protocol. Beneath the music, conversations are taking place that matter to more people than those in the room. The line shows the dance, not the negotiations.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the embassy ball is ceremony doing real work. Forms and manners, which can look like mere decoration, let people who might be at odds meet, talk and keep the peace. Our keyword is "Formal diplomacy", and our keynote says relations between powers are conducted through ceremony. A placement here can be read as social grace and tact, a feel for protocol, and an understanding that how a thing is said can matter as much as what is said. It can also be read as a question about the distance between the polished surface of an occasion and what is really going on beneath it.

The opposite degree is Taurus 12, people looking into shop windows, our "Looking before choosing". As a reading aid, the pair joins two kinds of showing in public: goods set out behind glass for passers-by to weigh, and people set out in their finery for one another to weigh, at a dance where every step is watched.

In Lynda Hill's practice Scorpio 12 is read between two neighbours, the Karmic Condition behind it and the Quest Degree ahead. Before Scorpio 12 is Scorpio 11, a man brought out of the water just in time; after it is Scorpio 13, an inventor trying out his ideas. The three pictures move from urgent personal help, to the formal management of relations between nations, to someone testing something new.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 11°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 11°05′ reads Scorpio 12, and so does one at Scorpio 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 13 after Scorpio 11°59′, or back into Scorpio 11 before Scorpio 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 11, Scorpio 13 and Taurus 12 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 11 and Scorpio 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Taurus 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Scorpio 11°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 11. 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: Relations between powers are conducted through ceremony.

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 11: Saved from the deep the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Scorpio 13: Testing the new the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Taurus 12: Looking before choosing the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to