One promise that holds two meanings

The image

This is one of the abstract images of Aries: no figure and no place, only a promise that turns out to be double. The picture leaves open what the two parts are; it could be a pledge with an inner and an outer sense, a vow made to two people at once, or a word that commits the speaker now and later.

Meaning

The tradition reads the image as a lesson about the weight of words. A promise is made in a moment, but it can open in two directions, one obvious and one that appears only with time. Our keyword is A twofold promise, and our keynote states it in one sentence: one pledge can carry more than one meaning. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where commitments are layered, where a person says yes to one thing and finds that a second comes with it, or where a single choice serves two ends. The image asks for attention to both sides of what is promised; it does not say what either side holds.

Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the one after its Quest Degree. Before Aries 25 comes Aries 24, the curtain billowing like a horn of plenty; after it comes Aries 26, a man given so many gifts that they spill from his hands. Read that way, an openness to what comes in is followed by a double pledge, and the pledge by more than one person can hold. The degree opposite, Libra 25, is an autumn leaf read as a message: as a reading aid it sets a sign found in nature beside this degree's sign given in words.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 24°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 24°36′ reads Aries 25, and so does one at Aries 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 26 after Aries 24°59′, or back into Aries 24 before Aries 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 Aries 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 24, Aries 26 and Libra 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

Aries 24 and Aries 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Libra 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aries 24°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 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: One pledge can carry more than one meaning.

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

• Aries 24: Receptive abundance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aries 26: Overflowing talent the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Libra 25: A sign in nature the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to