The image
A frozen lake or river in deep winter, and men out on it with long saws, cutting the ice into blocks. Before refrigeration, ice was harvested this way and stored in sawdust for the warm months. The picture is of the labour: breath steaming, saws working, dark water showing in the cuts. It is described as an image of work and nothing more.
Our research has not seen the 1925 card wording for this degree. The line here, our own, replaced one very close to Rudhyar's 1973 version on 2026-10-10.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, sawing the ice is about working with what has hardened. The frozen surface is an obstacle, but it is also a resource, and the work turns one into the other. Our keyword is "Cutting the ice", and our keynote says hard, cold work opens a way through what has frozen. A placement here can be read as perseverance in unpromising conditions, a practical ingenuity that finds use in difficulty, and a readiness to break through what others accept as fixed. The phrase "breaking the ice" between people is close by too: this image can be read as patient effort that opens a cold situation.
Read the way Lynda Hill reads a chart, Sagittarius 20 looks back to a Karmic Condition and forward to a Quest Degree. Before Sagittarius 20 is Sagittarius 19, pelicans moving to a new home; after it is Sagittarius 21, where a dog and a small boy or girl both wear someone else's spectacles. The run moves from birds shifting ground, to people cutting into frozen ground, to play that tries on another's way of seeing.
The degree opposite is Gemini 20, a self-service cafeteria, our "Plentiful choice". As a reading aid, the two pictures stand at opposite ends of supply: everything laid out at once for the taking, and a cold harvest that has to be won block by block for later use.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 19°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 19°31′ reads Sagittarius 20, and so does one at Sagittarius 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 21 after Sagittarius 19°59′, or back into Sagittarius 19 before Sagittarius 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 19, Sagittarius 21 and Gemini 20 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 19 and Sagittarius 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Gemini 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Sagittarius 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 19. 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: Hard, cold work opens a way through what has frozen.
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 19: Changing ground the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Sagittarius 21: Borrowed vision the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Gemini 20: Plentiful choice the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
