An inventor running his experiments

The image

A workshop, a bench covered in parts, and someone bent over a device that does not yet quite work. The inventor adjusts something, tries again, writes a note, adjusts again. The picture is of a process rather than a triumph: no finished machine, only the patient round of trial and correction that comes before one.

The degree's picture comes from the session in 1925 in which Elsie Wheeler described the images and Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down. Our old line was close to Rudhyar's 1973 version and was replaced on 2026-10-10.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the inventor stands for the meeting of imagination and fact. An idea is only an idea until it is built and tested, and the image is about that testing, which is mostly failure that teaches. Our keyword is "Testing the new", and our keynote says an idea is tried against reality under controlled conditions. A placement here can be read as curiosity and practical ingenuity, a readiness to fail in small ways in order to learn, and pleasure in the workshop more than in the showroom. The image is modest. Its hero is not the famous inventor but the one still at the bench.

Lynda Hill calls the degree that precedes Scorpio 13 its Karmic Condition and the one that follows its Quest Degree. Those are Scorpio 12, a formal dance at an embassy, and Scorpio 14, workmen up the poles fixing telephone lines. From ceremony between nations, the run turns to a private experiment, and then to the practical work that carries voices from one place to another.

Across the wheel lies Taurus 13, a man busy with bags and cases, our "Handling the load". As a reading aid, the two pictures sit side by side as two kinds of hands-on competence: moving what has to be moved, and making what has never been made.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 12°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 12°42′ reads Scorpio 13, and so does one at Scorpio 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 14 after Scorpio 12°59′, or back into Scorpio 12 before Scorpio 12°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 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 12, Scorpio 14 and Taurus 13 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 12 and Scorpio 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Taurus 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Scorpio 12°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 12. 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: An idea is tried against reality under controlled conditions.

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 12: Formal diplomacy the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Scorpio 14: Linking people the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Taurus 13: Handling the load the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to