Easter worship as the sun comes up

The image

Before sunrise people gather out of doors, on a hillside, in a churchyard or a park, wrapped against the morning chill. As the light comes up they sing and pray together to mark the Christian feast of the Resurrection. The picture is of the gathering and the dawn: many people, one horizon, and the sun rising on them all. We describe the observance with respect and read it as a symbol.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the dawn service joins a natural and a spiritual renewal. The sun rises as it does every day, and the people who have come to see it give the rising a meaning they share. Our keyword is "Shared renewal", and our keynote speaks of people rising early to greet a day of new life together. A placement here can be read as a feeling for new beginnings, a love of ritual and of common celebration, and a sense that hope is stronger when it is held by many. The early hour is part of the image: renewal asks something of those who want to witness it.

Lynda Hill's names for the two neighbours of Sagittarius 17 are the Karmic Condition, before it, and the Quest Degree, after it. Here those are Sagittarius 16, gulls following a passing ship, and Sagittarius 18, little children in sunbonnets. Read across the three, birds gather where something might fall, people gather to greet a sunrise, and the smallest children are dressed for a day under that sun.

Opposite this degree is Gemini 17, a vigorous head that slowly becomes a thinker's head, our "From vigour to thought". As a reading aid, the pair joins two kinds of transformation: a life force gradually turned into mind, and a whole community celebrating a return to life at daybreak.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 16°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 17°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 16°40′ reads Sagittarius 17, and so does one at Sagittarius 16°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 18 after Sagittarius 16°59′, or back into Sagittarius 16 before Sagittarius 16°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 17 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 16, Sagittarius 18 and Gemini 17 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 16 and Sagittarius 18, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Gemini 17, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Sagittarius 16°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 17; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 16. 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: People rise early to greet a day of rebirth together.

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 16: Opportunistic following the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Sagittarius 18: Little ones outdoors the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Gemini 17: From vigour to thought the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to