The image
The picture is of a way of seeing rather than a thing seen. Rays pass through what looks solid and show, on the plate, the frame that holds it together. In 1925 the technique was still young and seemed close to magic. We describe it here as an image of looking through surfaces and read it as a symbol only; it is not about any examination or any person's condition.
Elsie Wheeler described this degree's picture to Marc Edmund Jones.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the X-ray is penetrating sight. It ignores the surface and shows the structure, which can be illuminating and can also feel intrusive. Our keyword is "Seeing through", and our keynote speaks of what lies beneath appearance being exposed to close study. A placement here can be read as an investigative turn of mind, a gift for understanding how things are put together, and an impatience with pretence. The image also carries a caution about such sight: to see through someone is not a kindness in every case, and what is shown on the plate is the frame, not the whole person.
The opposite degree is Taurus 25, a large and stately public park, our "Shared cultivation". As a reading aid, the pair sets an outward, open space kept in order for everyone beside an inward look at the hidden structure of a single thing.
Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Scorpio 25 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Scorpio 24, people pouring down a slope toward a single speaker, comes before; Scorpio 26, a Native people making camp, comes after. The run passes from a public gathering, to a private and penetrating look, to a community setting up a home for the time being.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Scorpio 24°00′ up to, but not including, Scorpio 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Scorpio 24°06′ reads Scorpio 25, and so does one at Scorpio 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Scorpio 26 after Scorpio 24°59′, or back into Scorpio 24 before Scorpio 24°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 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Scorpio 24, Scorpio 26 and Taurus 25 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 24 and Scorpio 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Taurus 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Scorpio 24°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Scorpio 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Scorpio 24. 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: What lies beneath appearance is laid open to close study.
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 24: Drawn to one voice the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Scorpio 26: Making camp the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Taurus 25: Shared cultivation the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Scorpio in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
