Ten logs laid at the foot of a dark arch

The image

An arch opens onto darkness: whatever lies beyond it cannot be seen from where the viewer stands. At its foot ten logs have been laid, cut and ready, though the picture does not say who brought them or what they are for. Fuel, timber for building, a count of ten: the image leaves those possibilities open.

Whether the logs are an offering, a store or a barrier is not shown.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Threshold of the unknown" and our keynote: raw material is laid at the entrance to what is still unexplored. Both are ours.

An arch is a made thing, an entrance someone built on purpose, and the darkness behind it is not empty but unlit. We read the logs as preparation: the means are gathered before the way is clear. One way to see the degree is as the stage of an undertaking when the resources are present and the next step is still in shadow, and the task is to decide whether to carry them through. Ten is a complete count in many traditions, so the image can also be read as a full set of materials waiting for a use. Readers of the Sabian symbols treat details like the number as part of the picture to think about, not as a code.

Lynda Hill, whose practice this is, treats the degree behind as background and the degree ahead as aim. The degree before is Capricorn 5, men rowing and dancing in a canoe, energy in motion; this degree halts that motion at a doorway. The degree after is Capricorn 7, a powerful figure whose face is veiled, so what waits beyond the arch can be read as authority not yet shown.

The opposite degree, Cancer 6, has game birds lining their nests with feathers, and it can be read beside this one as a reading aid: both images gather material before something begins, one at the edge of the unknown and one at the heart of a home.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 5°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 6°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 5°23′ reads Capricorn 6, and so does one at Capricorn 5°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 7 after Capricorn 5°59′, or back into Capricorn 5 before Capricorn 5°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 Capricorn 6 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 5, Capricorn 7 and Cancer 6 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

Capricorn 5 and Capricorn 7, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Cancer 6, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Capricorn 5°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 6; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 5. 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: Raw material is laid at the entrance to what is still unexplored.

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

• Capricorn 5: Effort and excitement the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Capricorn 7: Veiled authority the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Cancer 6: Preparing for the young the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to