The image
The picture is of a woman in light, gentle colours bearing a burden that is both heavy and valuable, covered so that no one can see what it is. Her clothes suggest calm and her posture strength; the veil keeps the load private. The image does not say where she is going or whose the burden is. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Aries 23.
Meaning
The tradition reads the veiled burden as something of great value carried quietly. Its weight is real, but it is borne with grace, and hiding it is a kind of care: what is precious is protected from careless eyes. Our keyword is Hidden burden, and our keynote reads the picture in one sentence: something precious and weighty is carried gracefully and kept from view. One way to recognise the image in a chart is a placement where a person holds responsibility, knowledge or feeling privately, and carries it without display. The picture does not say whether the burden is set down; it shows the carrying.
By Lynda Hill's rule the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Before Aries 23 stands Aries 22, the gate to a garden of longing; after it stands Aries 24, a net curtain that billows out like a horn of plenty at an open window. Read so, a longing at the gate becomes a precious weight to carry, and the weight leads to a moment of openness in which plenty comes in on the air. The degree opposite, Libra 23, is a crowing rooster, all display and announcement; as a reading aid it sets loud pride beside this degree's quiet, covered load.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 22°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 22°22′ reads Aries 23, and so does one at Aries 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 24 after Aries 22°59′, or back into Aries 22 before Aries 22°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 Aries 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 22, Aries 24 and Libra 23 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
- Aries 22 and Aries 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 22°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 22. 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: Something precious and weighty is carried gracefully and kept from view.
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
- Aries 22: At the garden gate the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 24: Receptive abundance the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 23: Proud crowing the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
