The image
"The colours" are a regiment's flag, or a team's, a school's or a movement's, and the person carrying them walks at the front or in the centre, holding them high so that everyone behind can see them. The picture is of the bearer, upright and steady, with the cloth moving above. It does not say where the march is going, only who carries the sign of it.
The 1925 card wording for this degree has not been seen by our research. Our old line was nearly Rudhyar's 1973 rewording; our own, compared with his and Jones's, took its place on 2026-10-10.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the standard-bearer stands for visible commitment. The flag means little in itself; what matters is that someone holds it where others can rally to it. Our keyword is "Carrying the standard", and our keynote says one holds up the meaning of the struggle for all to see. A placement here can be read as conviction and loyalty, a readiness to be identified with a cause, and the steadiness to keep a shared purpose in view when others falter. It can also be read as the weight of representing others, since the bearer is the most visible person in the line.
Read the way Lynda Hill reads a chart, Sagittarius 26 looks back to its Karmic Condition, the boy on the hobby-horse of Sagittarius 25, and forward to its Quest Degree, the sculptor of Sagittarius 27. The three pictures go from courage rehearsed, to a cause carried in public, to vision given lasting form in stone.
The degree opposite is Gemini 26, woods white with frost in winter, our "Beauty in dormancy". As a reading aid, the pair contrasts life drawn into stillness, lovely in its rest, with a single figure in motion holding a sign aloft for others to follow.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Sagittarius 25°00′ up to, but not including, Sagittarius 26°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Sagittarius 25°13′ reads Sagittarius 26, and so does one at Sagittarius 25°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Sagittarius 27 after Sagittarius 25°59′, or back into Sagittarius 25 before Sagittarius 25°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 26 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Sagittarius 25, Sagittarius 27 and Gemini 26 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 25 and Sagittarius 27, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Gemini 26, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Sagittarius 25°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Sagittarius 26; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Sagittarius 25. 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 holds up the meaning of the struggle for all to see.
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 25: Rehearsed adventure the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Sagittarius 27: Form from vision the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Gemini 26: Beauty in dormancy the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Sagittarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
