The image
As far as the eye goes, the sea is rough. The wind has raised small waves across the whole surface and each one breaks white at its crest, so that the water seems sprinkled with foam. There are no ships and no shore in the line, only the open sea in a fresh wind. It is a lively image, more exhilarating than threatening.
The line on this page is our own, after the image Elsie Wheeler described and Marc Edmund Jones wrote down.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the foam-flecked sea is agitation that is everywhere at once. Nothing has gone badly wrong; the wind is simply up, and the whole surface responds. Our keyword is "Rough water", and our keynote says the whole sea is stirred and broken into foam. A placement here can be read as a restless, energetic temperament, a mind with many small waves breaking at once, and a feeling for the excitement of open, unsettled conditions. The image can also be read as an invitation to look below, where the deeper water stays calm while the surface churns.
Lynda Hill would read Sagittarius 2 with its Karmic Condition, the degree before, and its Quest Degree, the degree after. The two are Sagittarius 1, the Union veterans at their campfire, and Sagittarius 3, two men at a game of chess. The run moves from settled memory by a fire, to a whole sea set moving, to two minds in a contained and quiet contest.
Opposite is Gemini 2, where stockings are filled unseen by Santa Claus, our "Unseen generosity". As a reading aid, the two pictures make an unlikely pair: one is about quiet, hidden giving at night, the other about a surface so stirred up that nothing on it can stay quiet.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 1°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 1°25′ reads Sagittarius 2, and so does one at Sagittarius 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 3 after Sagittarius 1°59′, or back into Sagittarius 1 before Sagittarius 1°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 Sagittarius 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 1, Sagittarius 3 and Gemini 2 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
- Sagittarius 1 and Sagittarius 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Gemini 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Sagittarius 1°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 1. 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: The whole sea is stirred and broken into foam.
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
- Sagittarius 1: Old comrades the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Sagittarius 3: Strategic contest the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Gemini 2: Unseen generosity the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
