The image
The flag is flying, and then it is not a flag: its shape becomes an eagle, the bird so many flags carry, and the eagle opens its beak and crows like a cockerel. The picture is dreamlike in the way it slides from one thing to another, and the crowing is its odd final touch, a farmyard sound from a bird of mountains.
Our research knows the 1925 card wording through Astrowiki's transcription of Roche, and in our saved copy of it the row for this degree breaks off before the card's words.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the flag that becomes an eagle is an emblem turning into a living thing. A flag stands for something; the eagle is something. Our keyword is "Rising transformation", and our keynote says a symbol comes alive and finds its own voice. A placement here can be read as the urge to embody what one represents, to move from badge to being, and to speak for oneself rather than flutter for a cause. The crowing adds a note of announcement, even of boasting, so the image can also be read as a question about what is being proclaimed and to whom.
Lynda Hill would place a Karmic Condition just behind Sagittarius 12 and a Quest Degree just ahead of it. Sagittarius 11, the lamp shining beside the left temple, comes before; Sagittarius 13, the history of a widow coming to light, comes after. One way through the three: an inner light, an emblem bursting into life and voice, and then a private past made public.
The degree opposite is Gemini 12, a spirited young girl answering back, sure of herself, our "Self-assertion". As a reading aid, the pair joins two voices that insist on being heard: a girl's sharp, witty reply, and a crowing eagle where one might expect a scream.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 11°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 11°35′ reads Sagittarius 12, and so does one at Sagittarius 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 13 after Sagittarius 11°59′, or back into Sagittarius 11 before Sagittarius 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 11, Sagittarius 13 and Gemini 12 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 11 and Sagittarius 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Gemini 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Sagittarius 11°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 11. 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 symbol comes alive and finds its own voice.
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 11: Light in the body the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Sagittarius 13: Hidden history revealed the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Gemini 12: Self-assertion the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
