The image
The picture belongs to a nursery tale. A small rabbit, soft and easily frightened, changes as we watch into a fairy, with the rabbit's quickness turned into flight and its shyness into something glimmering. The line gives the transformation and nothing more: no wand, no spell, no reason. It is one of the set's fairy-tale images, of which there are several in this part of Scorpio.
Elsie Wheeler described the image to Marc Edmund Jones in 1925. Our table carried a line almost in Rudhyar's 1973 wording until 2026-10-10, when our own replaced it.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the rabbit's change is an upward transformation. What was close to the ground, alert to every danger, becomes light enough to leave the ground altogether. Our keyword is "Transformation upward", and our keynote says a timid creature becomes something subtle and free. A placement here can be read as a capacity for refinement, for turning nervousness into sensitivity and caution into imagination. The image is gentle and slightly comic; it suggests that the gifts of the new form were already present in the old one, only waiting to be lifted.
In Lynda Hill's practice Scorpio 23 is read between two neighbours, the Karmic Condition behind it and the Quest Degree ahead. Here those are Scorpio 22, duck hunters setting out together, and Scorpio 24, where people pour down a slope toward a single speaker. The three images can be read as the hunt, the hunted creature turned to something beyond the hunt, and many people drawn by a single voice.
The degree opposite is Taurus 23, a jeweller's shop, our "Displayed value", where worked and polished things are set out for those who can recognise them. As a reading aid, the pair sets two kinds of refinement side by side: stones cut and polished by skill, and a small animal changed into something finer from within.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 22°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 22°52′ reads Scorpio 23, and so does one at Scorpio 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 24 after Scorpio 22°59′, or back into Scorpio 22 before Scorpio 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 Scorpio 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 22, Scorpio 24 and Taurus 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
- Scorpio 22 and Scorpio 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 22°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 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: A timid creature becomes something subtle and free.
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 22: Pursuit the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 24: Drawn to one voice the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 23: Displayed value the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
