The image
A parrot on its perch, head cocked, listening to the room. A moment later it gives back a phrase in a voice that is uncannily like the speaker's. The bird has the sound perfectly and the sense not at all. The picture is comic and a little unsettling, as parrots are when they say something human. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Scorpio 19.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the parrot is about learning by imitation and its limits. Every child learns language by copying, and every student begins by repeating; the image asks what happens if one never goes further. Our keyword is "Imitation", and our keynote says words are reproduced without being understood. A placement here can be read as a quick ear and a gift for picking up voices, styles and phrases, and as a gentle challenge to make what is repeated one's own. The image can also be read about rumour and slogans: things said because they were heard, not because they were weighed.
The degree opposite is Taurus 19, a new continent just formed and solid, our "New ground". As a reading aid, the pair sets copying against origination: one voice echoing what already exists, and a whole new land rising where there was none.
Scorpio 19 sits, in Lynda Hill's terms, between a Karmic Condition and a Quest Degree. Before Scorpio 19 are the autumn trees of Scorpio 18, in their full colour; after it is Scorpio 20, where dark curtains are pulled aside by a woman's hand. The run moves from maturity, to repetition without understanding, to the moment a hand lets the light in.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 18°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 18°24′ reads Scorpio 19, and so does one at Scorpio 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 20 after Scorpio 18°59′, or back into Scorpio 18 before Scorpio 18°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 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 18, Scorpio 20 and Taurus 19 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 18 and Scorpio 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 18°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 18. 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: Words are reproduced without being understood.
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 18: Ripened splendour the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 20: Drawing back the curtains the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 19: New ground the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
