The image
Heavy curtains, dark in colour, hang across a window or a doorway, and a woman takes hold of them and draws them apart. The picture is the gesture itself: the cloth moving, the gap widening, light or a view appearing beyond. The line does not say what lies behind the curtains, or why they were closed. It shows only the opening.
The card of 1925 supplied, almost unchanged, the line our table printed here until 2026-10-10.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, drawing back the curtains is a choice to see. Darkness here is not a threat but a covering, something that has been keeping the light out, perhaps for good reasons, perhaps from habit. Our keyword is "Drawing back the curtains", and our keynote says a hand moves aside what was darkening the view. A placement here can be read as a readiness to look at what has been hidden, a gift for clearing away what obscures a situation, and the courage to let light into closed rooms. The image is active: someone has to reach out and pull.
Lynda Hill would place a Karmic Condition just behind Scorpio 20 and a Quest Degree just ahead of it. Scorpio 19, the parrot repeating what it has heard, comes before; Scorpio 21, a soldier who has left his post, comes after. Read across the three, words echoed without sense give way to a clear view, and the clear view to a picture of duty not kept.
Across the wheel is Taurus 20, clouds driven fast by the wind, our "Swift inspiration". As a reading aid, the pair joins two ways a view clears: by the quick passage of high cloud across the sky, and by one deliberate hand drawing back the cloth.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 19°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 19°01′ reads Scorpio 20, and so does one at Scorpio 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 21 after Scorpio 19°59′, or back into Scorpio 19 before Scorpio 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 19, Scorpio 21 and Taurus 20 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 19 and Scorpio 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 19. 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: A hand moves aside what was darkening the 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
- Scorpio 19: Imitation the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 21: Duty neglected the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 20: Swift inspiration the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
