The image
A figure of great power, a prophet, stands before others, and a veil covers his face. His presence is unmistakable, but the expression that would show what he means is out of view. The picture is of influence without a visible face.
The picture leaves open whom he speaks to and what he says. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Capricorn 7.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Veiled authority", and our keynote: power is present, but its face is hidden.
A veil can protect, conceal or concentrate attention. We read the image as the kind of authority that works without being personal: the office rather than the individual, the voice whose source cannot be questioned because it cannot be seen. One way to see the degree is as the strength of reserve, of not explaining oneself. Another is the risk the picture also carries, that hidden power answers to no one. The tradition does not choose between these; it reads the image as a description and leaves its weight to the rest of the chart and to the person reading.
By Hill's custom a placement is read with the degree it comes out of and the degree it moves toward. The degree before, Capricorn 6, is a dark arch with ten logs at its foot, a threshold into the unknown, and the veiled prophet can be read as the figure who stands there. The degree after, Capricorn 8, brings birds singing gladly indoors, a turn from mystery to plain, sheltered joy.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Cancer 7, two fairies in moonlight. Both images belong to the half-seen. The veiled prophet carries weight and gravity; the fairies carry enchantment and lightness, and reading them together balances power with feeling.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 6°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 7°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 6°00′ reads Capricorn 7, and so does one at Capricorn 6°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 8 after Capricorn 6°59′, or back into Capricorn 6 before Capricorn 6°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 7 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 6, Capricorn 8 and Cancer 7 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 6 and Capricorn 8, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 7, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 6°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 7; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 6. 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: Power is present, but its face is hidden.
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
- Capricorn 6: Threshold of the unknown the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 8: Domestic joy the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 7: Enchanted feeling the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
