A soldier who has left his post

The image

The sentry box is empty, or the watch is unkept. Somewhere a soldier who should be standing guard is elsewhere: asleep, wandering, or simply gone. The line gives no reason. It shows the gap where a person ought to be, and the post left open behind him. We read the picture as a symbol only, with no judgement on any real service or the rules that govern it.

Our old table printed this degree nearly as the 1925 card has it until 2026-10-10; Elsie Wheeler's picture is now told in a line of our own.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the neglected post asks what one owes and to whom. A soldier's duty is clear and imposed from outside; leaving it can be weakness, or it can be the first sign that a different loyalty has taken over. Our keyword is "Duty neglected", and our keynote says a soldier is not where his duty puts him. A placement here can be read as a tension between obligation and inclination, a restlessness with assigned roles, or a reminder of the posts in one's own life that others count on. The image leaves open whether the soldier is at fault, and that openness is part of what makes it useful.

Lynda Hill would read Scorpio 21 with its Karmic Condition, the degree before, and its Quest Degree, the degree after. Before Scorpio 21 is Scorpio 20, where a hand draws dark curtains aside; after it is Scorpio 22, a party of duck hunters setting out. The three pictures move from a clear view let into a room, to a post left empty, to people going out together with a purpose they have chosen for themselves.

The degree opposite is Taurus 21, a fingertip pointing to a place in an open book, our "Pointing out". As a reading aid, the pair contrasts attention fixed on one precise spot on the page with attention that has wandered from the one spot it was meant to keep.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 20°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 21°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 20°38′ reads Scorpio 21, and so does one at Scorpio 20°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 22 after Scorpio 20°59′, or back into Scorpio 20 before Scorpio 20°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 21 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 20, Scorpio 22 and Taurus 21 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 20 and Scorpio 22, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Taurus 21, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Scorpio 20°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 21; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 20. 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 soldier is not where his duty puts him.

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 20: Drawing back the curtains the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Scorpio 22: Pursuit the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Taurus 21: Pointing out the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to