The image
The picture is of a goddess, and the goddess is Opportunity herself, her hair golden and bright. Older art often showed such a figure on the move, so that she had to be grasped at the moment of passing or not at all. The line keeps her simple: the radiance of the hair, the presence of the figure. We read her as an image only. Nothing here promises any reader a chance or a turn of events.
Elsie Wheeler described this image to Marc Edmund Jones in 1925; our table printed a line almost in Rudhyar's 1973 words until 2026-10-10, and our own replaced it.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the goddess of opportunity is chance given a face. Moments of possibility come and go, and the image says that part of meeting them is simply seeing them for what they are. Our keyword is "Chance personified", and our keynote says opportunity is shown as a figure one must recognise and seize. A placement here can be read as alertness to openings, a readiness to move when a moment arrives, and an attraction to the bright and the promising. It can also be read as a quiet test of judgement: not everything golden is the goddess.
Lynda Hill treats the degree just before Sagittarius 10 as its Karmic Condition and the degree just after as its Quest Degree. Here that means Sagittarius 9, a mother and her children on the stairs, and Sagittarius 11, a lamp giving light to the body beside the left temple. The pictures go from a family in passage, to a passing chance in human form, to a light kindled within the body itself.
Across the wheel lies Gemini 10, an aeroplane coming down out of the sky, our "Daring descent", where control is tested by a deliberate plunge toward the ground. As a reading aid, the two pictures make a pair of bold moments: a figure to be seized as she goes by, and a craft deliberately brought down to earth.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 9°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 9°21′ reads Sagittarius 10, and so does one at Sagittarius 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 11 after Sagittarius 9°59′, or back into Sagittarius 9 before Sagittarius 9°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 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 9, Sagittarius 11 and Gemini 10 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 9 and Sagittarius 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Gemini 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Sagittarius 9°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 9. 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: Opportunity is shown as a figure one must recognise and seize.
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 9: Between levels the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Sagittarius 11: Light in the body the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Gemini 10: Daring descent the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
