A mother and her children on the stairs

The image

The picture is of a stair in a house, and partway along it a woman and her children. Perhaps she holds a small hand, perhaps the children run ahead and wait; the line does not say whether they are going up or coming down. It shows them in passage, neither on the floor they left nor on the one they are heading for.

Elsie Wheeler described the image to Marc Edmund Jones in 1925.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the staircase is a place of transition, and the family on it is in the middle of a change. Stairs are climbed one at a time, and children climb them with help. Our keyword is "Between levels", and our keynote says a mother and her children are on the way from one level to the next. A placement here can be read as an awareness of growth as a step-by-step movement, a protective sense of leading others along with oneself, and comfort with the in-between. The image is domestic and gentle; the change it shows happens inside a home.

The degree opposite is Gemini 9, arrows packed in a quiver, our "Ready means". As a reading aid, the two pictures join preparation and progress: tools stocked and waiting for a target, and people already in motion, step by step, toward the next floor.

Read the way Lynda Hill reads a chart, Sagittarius 9 looks back to a Karmic Condition and forward to a Quest Degree. Sagittarius 8, something forming inside the rocks, comes before; Sagittarius 10, Opportunity pictured as a goddess with golden hair, comes after. The run passes from slow hidden growth, to a family moving between levels, to the figure of a chance that has to be recognised when it appears.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 8°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 9°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 8°44′ reads Sagittarius 9, and so does one at Sagittarius 8°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 10 after Sagittarius 8°59′, or back into Sagittarius 8 before Sagittarius 8°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 9 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 8, Sagittarius 10 and Gemini 9 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 8 and Sagittarius 10, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Gemini 9, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Sagittarius 8°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 9; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 8. 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 mother and her children are on the way from one level to the next.

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 8: Hidden formation the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Sagittarius 10: Chance personified the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Gemini 9: Ready means the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to