The image
Along a road the wooden poles carry the wires, and men have climbed them with spikes and belts to splice, string and repair. Down below, the people whose calls run through those lines go about their day without looking up. In 1925 the telephone was still spreading into homes, and the picture catches the physical work behind it: men, poles and copper.
Elsie Wheeler described this degree's image to Marc Edmund Jones; our table printed a line almost in Rudhyar's 1973 words until 2026-10-10, and our own line now stands here.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the linemen are the hidden workers of communication. Every conversation depends on something physical that someone has climbed up to mend. Our keyword is "Linking people", and our keynote says work high above the ground joins voices that were separate. A placement here can be read as a gift for building and maintaining connections, a practical interest in networks of every kind, and a contentment in making things work for others without needing to be seen doing it. The height in the picture can also be read as a vantage: from the top of the pole the lines run out in every direction.
The opposite degree, Taurus 14, shows children playing near shellfish that feel their way along, our "Innocence beside instinct". As a reading aid, the pair contrasts two levels of life that share a shore without noticing each other with a web of wires built expressly so that people far apart can notice each other.
Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Scorpio 14 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Scorpio 13, an inventor trying things out, lies before this one; Scorpio 15, children playing round five heaps of sand, lies after. The three pictures go from the invention, to the installation, to play with the raw materials from which every structure begins.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 13°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 13°19′ reads Scorpio 14, and so does one at Scorpio 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 15 after Scorpio 13°59′, or back into Scorpio 13 before Scorpio 13°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 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 13, Scorpio 15 and Taurus 14 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 13 and Scorpio 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 13°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 13. 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: Work high above the ground joins voices that were separate.
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 13: Testing the new the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 15: Playing with form the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 14: Innocence beside instinct the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
