A long afternoon of cricket

The image

White figures on a green field, a bowler running in, a batsman waiting, fielders spread out across the grass and a few spectators in deckchairs at the boundary. The match is under way and set to go on for hours. Much of the time very little seems to happen; then a ball is struck, a run is taken, and the game shifts. The picture is unhurried and full of ritual.

This is one of the 1925 images from Balboa Park.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the cricket match stands for contest as a long, civil conversation. The teams want to win, but the rules, the pauses and the courtesies matter as much as the result. Our keyword is "Fair play", and our keynote says contest is conducted by patient rules over a long day. A placement here can be read as a sense of fairness and good sporting manners, an enjoyment of slow strategy, and the patience to keep one's concentration through long quiet stretches. The image also carries the pleasure of the occasion itself, the afternoon on the grass, whatever the scoreboard says.

Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Sagittarius 6 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Here those are Sagittarius 5, the old owl high in its tree, and Sagittarius 7, Cupid knocking on a door. One way through the three: quiet watching from above, a long contest on open ground, and then feeling arriving at a threshold to ask to come in.

Opposite stands Gemini 6, a rig drilling down for oil, our "Tapping hidden resources". As a reading aid, the pair sets effort driven deep beneath the surface beside effort spread out over a sunlit field, one boring for what is stored below and the other playing out on the grass in full view.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 5°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 6°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 5°53′ reads Sagittarius 6, and so does one at Sagittarius 5°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 7 after Sagittarius 5°59′, or back into Sagittarius 5 before Sagittarius 5°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 6 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 5, Sagittarius 7 and Gemini 6 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 5 and Sagittarius 7, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Gemini 6, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Sagittarius 5°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 6; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 5. 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: Contest is conducted by patient rules over a long day.

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

• Sagittarius 5: Watchful wisdom the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Sagittarius 7: Love's approach the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Gemini 6: Tapping hidden resources the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to